The Deal
by MinkeOR
Summary: They say that desperate times call for desperate measures. They also say that no man is an island. So when Nellis Barton finds herself in desperate times, she seeks out the help of Haymitch Abernathy, the man who has tried his whole life to become an unreachable and hostile rock of an island. [Set during the winter of Catching Fire.]
1. Chapter 1

I am running.

My body flies through the trees and my breath enters my lungs in one smooth draw and exits in the same fashion. I can feel the wind against my skin and it seems like I am barely touching the ground as I move along. My whole being is focused on the path in front of me and each footfall lands with confidence. I am following something, someone, who passes between the trees and stays just out of reach. I can't quite make them out and I struggle to speed up to catch them. My brain tells my legs to move faster but they won't cooperate. I am simply unable to overtake whoever I am tracking. The panic begins slowly in my chest and spreads into my arms and down my legs. My breathing starts to break and suddenly I feel like my lungs are empty of air. My limbs begin to tremble and I slow down trying to catch my breath but it doesn't come. I start to panic, trying to get a breath, and then the sharp bangs draw my head up and I open my eyes.

I am lying in my bed, clutching a pillow in my arms and my body curled into a protective fetal position. I have a death grip on the pillow, my body is covered in cold sweat, and the blankets are in a pile at the end of the bed. My heart is still pounding in my chest as if I had really been running and it takes me a few moments to fully come back from the dream I had been lost in. Another round of bangs on the front door sink me back firmly into reality and I sit up, rubbing my arms to ward off the chill that is setting in from the cold air against my skin. There's only one person who would be at our door this late at night seeking their fix to check out of this world.

While I'm grabbing a sweater off the chair next to my bed I see my grandmother begin to rise from the bed just across from mine where she sleeps, pushing herself up on her one arm and blinking the sleep from her eyes.

"It's all right," I whisper, "I'll see to him."

She smiles and murmurs a grateful reply as she lies back down, asleep again before her head hits the pillow. I pull the itchy sweater over myself and clamp my arms around my torso to head out into the main room, the bangs growing more persistent as I do. I groan quietly to myself as I cross the small living space and place my hand on the doorknob. He must hear the slight click when I do because the banging stops and I can hear his ragged breathing behind the wood panels. I open the door just a crack, peeking out at the crystalline grey eyes that are eager to be received.

"You can't keep doing this, Haymitch," I say to the eyes and they grin at me but I refuse to open the door any more at the moment. "You can't keep running out here in the middle of the night every time you run out."

"Come on, Nellis, I've brought presents," he says, holding up a small pouch that I know is brimming with coins.

He doesn't slur his words and his voice has an edge to it that tips me off as to how far into the withdrawal he is. I decide it's probably better to satisfy his craving rather than teach him a lesson.

"You don't get to call me that," I say through the crack in the door, making demands of my own so he knows where we stand.

"Fine," he relents. "All right, Miss Barton." He practically snears when he says it and even though he's used the wrong title, I allow it.

"She keeps a regular stall in the The Hobb for a reason," I say, opening the door enough to let him in and making sure he closes it behind himself. "You should really learn to plan for moments like this."

"Whatever," he says and tosses the pouch onto our small table while he heads over to the hearth where the last of the still flickering coals linger into the night. I go to the corner and easily shift a large trunk to reveal a trap door in the floor. Opening the door I am met by the constant temperature of the hole that's been dug into the ground beneath our tiny house, it works perfectly to keep the neatly packed bottles of liquor a constant temperature, a trick that my grandmother picked up from her father, the original moonshiner of the family. I pull out four bottles, Haymitch's usual haul, and line them up on the floor before closing the trap door and scooting the trunk back over it. I take them over to the table where I set them in a neat row and empty the coins onto the table to make sure he brought enough, though we both know it's more of a formality than anything as he's been buying the liquor for so long he must know how much it costs better than anyone else.

"Fine then," I say and put the coins back into the bag. He nods and scoops up a bottle to take a long pull before leaving. He lets out a satisfied noise once he's had a good swig and smiles congenially at me. I just stare at him. He looks at me over the lip of the bottle for a good minute, like he's considering something about me, about the situation, but in the end decides better of himself and makes a move to leave. I am relieved to have him on his way.

"Pleasure," he says, his words practically dripping with sarcasm as he takes up the rest of the bottles and heads towards the front door. "It's always fine to do business with you."

"Go find someone else to annoy," I say under my breath and I let him out and shut the door quickly behind him. I can hear him laughing on the porch but I am already turned back towards the living room and crossing quickly to the linter room where we sleep. Before I know it I am back in my tiny bed, drawing the blankets back up over my already shivering body and closing my eyes trying desperately not to see the trees again, not to be running after someone I know I'll never catch.

When I wake up again it's to be greeted by the pale winter sun sifting through the thin cloth over the window pane. I slept all the way through the rest of the night, my dreams giving me a break for the moment. Most everyone in the Seam has nightmares of one form or another. To not have them is the true exception. We are all haunted in some way.

The bed across from me is empty and I can smell breakfast on the morning air. My grandmother has been up for who knows how long and I am silently grateful that she let me sleep in. What a brute, I think to myself at the memory of the night before. It was the third time this month that Haymitch had nearly beaten in our door. Another thing to be grateful for is that today he will be leaving on the Victory Tour and we will get a few weeks of peaceful nights. Though he is one of our best customers, I loathe having to deal with the man. He has respect for my grandmother but seems to withhold it from me. He must suspect that my interactions are laced by contempt.

But, as I am reminded, at the end of the day Haymitch's appearances whether in the Hobb or in the middle of the night will mean that we will be able to afford to feed ourselves another day. To survive another day.

I sit up, still wearing the sweater from the night before and settle my stockinged feet on the freezing floorboards. I breathe in a deep sigh and decided I might as well get started with the day. My body protests far to much for someone who is only twenty-nine, making me wonder what it will be like in five, ten, even fifteen years. If I make it that long.


	2. Chapter 2

A few weeks later, after the return of the Victors and just when things are starting to settle into a routine again, our world begins to break apart.

There is a certain heavy stillness that comes just before a storm hits. It thickens the air making it settle on everyone's shoulders, pushing us further into the depths than we already are. It knits our brows together in mental exercises of lists to see if we are ready for the coming weather. It causes more worry in a place that it is overflowing with the stuff. I can see it on the faces of the people around me and I've already run through my own preparations. I've counted off the stacked firewood, inventoried the meager food supply, and double checked that our stock is good and hidden. My grandmother stirs on her stool beside me, muttering about how deep the cold is.

"Catch me all the way to my bones, it does," she says with a wry smile. I grin back at her. Any change from the weather to the conditions in the mines to the mood in the Capitol can apparently be felt in my grandmother's bones.

"Same way you still think your arm itches in the morning?" I tease her gently.

"Hah," she gives a small laugh, "Better my arm than a whole husband."

I agree with a small sigh followed by silence. Yes, it was better to lose a limb than an entire someone you loved. At least this way you could manage to find a way to carry on with things whereas burying someone that deep in the earth never let's go of your heart. We would have marked our ten year anniversary now if he had lived. We were young when we were married and then he was lost that awful day five years ago that took so many lives.

So now at 29 I found myself a widow living with my grandmother and helping her sell liquor in the black market. Well, at least I had no children to see into this state. In that sense we had been lucky.

I can joke with my grandmother about it now, but there are moments when it still stings especially with the oppressive storm hanging over us all. She must sense my heavy heart and gives my knee a gentle pat.

"Nell," she says, using my pet name, "Be a bless and grab us a couple bowls of soup." She slides a couple coins on the counter towards me and I am grateful for the distraction of an errand and the promise of a hot meal that will warm me through. I cinch my old coat tighter around myself, scoop the coins into my hand and give her a pat on the shoulder as I exit the stall to venture across the Hobb to Greasy Sae's. I don't quite recognize every ingredient in today's concoction but I know better than to ask. It will be satisfying no matter what it is.

"Nellis," Greasy Sae says warmly, "How goes it?"

"Same as always," I reply as she dishes up the soup for me and I lay the money on the counter.

"Will you tell Ripper to come by later," she says, more of a statement than a question. "I need to bend her ear over something."

"Course," I say and nod goodbye as I head back towards our stall taking a lot of care to ensure I don't spill any of the precious food. Back at the table my grandmother is deep in dealings with Head Peacekeeper Cray. Just the sight of him makes my skin crawl. I hate the man and refuse any kind of interaction with him.

Soon after my husband passed when I was trying to find a way to get by on my own he'd cornered me one evening in an alleyway as I was headed home. My back pressed against the wall and his filthy hands on my upper arms he'd made the not so subtle suggestion that I could always find favor at his backdoor. His breath had reeked of liquor and a smile played over his puffy, red face. With a final whisper he tucked a few final stray pieces of hair behind my ear and then he left me there, keeling over from nausea and my head reeling. Once I'd collected myself I changed direction from my home and went instead to the only person I had left in the world, my grandmother, known to everyone as Ripper. She took me in and I've been under her wing ever since.

I think of that night whenever he is around and the white hot anger I still feel courses through me and I keep a good distance between us. As the years went by he seemed to lose some interest in me I'm sure preferring the younger women who still pawed his door. But there are still times when I catch him watching me in the Hobb and I can only stare back with all the hatred I can muster.

He slips away from the stall, tucking the liquor bottles into his pockets and I slip inside and plunk the soup down on the counter.

"Easy, girl," my grandmother says, taking up a spoon. "He pays the bills just the same as the others."

"Still," I say, watching the retreating form, "I wish you wouldn't sell to him." We eat in silence, savoring the warmth that spreads through our entire bodies.

"Gotta eat don't we?"

"I suppose," I said, she smiles at me and we both know that she's right and that I just need to deal with it. I haven't told her about what happened, it would only burden her and we there is already so much weighing on us.

I remember Greasy Sae's request and my grandmother heads off to return the bowls and visit for a minute. She stacks them one inside the other and puts the spoons in them so she can carry them at the same time. I watch her hobble off, making her way, laughing with people she knows, hassling those she cares about. She's part of the fabric of this place, an integral thread of the tapestry that is our little community. I'm still staring after her when there's a small knock on the counter top and I am pulled back to the present. Haymitch is standing in front of me, a few wisps of snow still clinging to his light hair.

"What," I say my tone more than a little annoyed.

"Good to see you, too," he answers, sarcasm dripping off of every word. I open my mouth to comment back but he's turned his head and is distracted by something. There's some kind of buzz heading up and down the rows of stalls, passing from one person to another in hushed whispers. Suddenly people are hurrying to close up shop and pack themselves away, to make themselves scarce. Haymitch looks confused and I rise from my stool to get a better look at what's going on.

"Aye, you've got to accept my apologies, Haymitch," my grandmother says, appearing suddenly by my side. "We've got to be going, you see." She nods towards the others making it clear that we've got to do the same.

"Ripper," Haymitch says, "What's going on?"

"Some kind of commotion in the square," she says while we pack away our things into a small handcart. "All the Peacekeepers were called down there and if you ask me it's probably not the time to be found around these parts."

Haymitch nods and backs away with one last look in my direction. Our eyes connect for a moment and I feel a quiet sense of urgency in his, a fear of something that I have no previous experience in. Something very bad is happening down in the square, that much I can tell, and whatever it is it seems as if Haymitch is deciding to throw himself into the thick of it.


	3. Chapter 3

I like it when it snows. Especially the very first day of a new snow because for a little while our district looks clean. Eventually the ever present coal dust will work itself through the snow and turn it a sick shade of grey. But at first everything is white. Everything is clean. Beautiful. I sit by the window in our tiny house and watch the fat flakes falling in the candlelight. They land softly and build drifts on the sides of buildings, covering the tracks of folks who are scurrying back to their houses. I trace small patterns on the foggy patches that my breath creates on the window. My grandmother putters about in the living room, piling up the hot coals in the hearth before putting two potatoes into a cast iron pot and burying it in the coals to bake. The noise from her movements breaks up the images that keep playing through my mind.

Though we had stood in the back of the crowd, huddled with other people from The Hobb, the scene that played out in the square was one that I know will be kept in the collective memory of 12 for many years to come. It was the first time many of us had seen anything like it. I'd felt that chills coursing through my body when Gale was strapped to the post and the first few strikes of the lash sent tremors through the crowd. But then eventually we stopped reacting and just stood numb with fear and disbelief. I had no memory of things like this. Those who could have looked on with knitted brows and wringing hands, taking in the scene like they had descended again into a nightmare.

We watched, transfixed, as the Victor's stepped in and ended the spectacle. The tension was palpable and I had thought for a panicked moment that they would all be shot. But Haymitch had held out his hands, swayed the volatile Peacekeeper Thread, and brought sanity again. I was surprised at his rationale, at this manipulation of the crazed Thread. But then it shouldn't have been that unexpected, he has spent most of his life surviving whatever the Capitol could throw at him and it's a testament that he has made it this long on his own. I find my eyes stay focused on him, the most familiar to me, and I can't shake the way he had looked at me over our table in The Hobb, the way he had seemed on the verge of saying something.

Probably something sarcastic and cutting, so it was no real loss.

New peacekeepers, and especially a new head, meant that no one was safe. Any tenuous relationships that you may have cultivated over the years were gone and it was anyone's guess what was going to happen next. When the crowd dispersed, peacekeepers pushing and shoving people every which way, my grandmother and I had slipped easily through the throngs and made our way home via The Hobb, scooping up our supply of liquor to take back to the house and store while we lay low.

"Nellis," my grandmother says, pulling my attention away from the weather. "Come away and help me with the mattress. We'll sleep out here for now. Keep the heat in the center of the house."

She heads into our linter room and I follow, scuffing my feet along the floor as I go. We pull the mattress from her bed, the larger of the two, and drag it out into the living room where we place it in front of the hearth. I gather our thin blankets and pillows in my arms and take them to the mattress where we make our bed. I settle on the nest I've created and my grandmother sits at the table to count the days take.

"Gran," I say. "Do you think it's going to last? These changes?"

The sound of sliding coins on the wooden table ceases and I turn around to see her fingers frozen over her task. She looks worried, but then her features melt into a pressed smile but she can't hide the fear in her eyes.

"There have been times like these in the past," she says. "But we will survive. We hunker down and outlast. It's what we do."

"And if it doesn't get better?"

"One day at a time, Nell," she soothes. "Shouldn't think too far ahead else you'll lose your footing in the present."

The baked potatoes warm us through and we eat slowly, savoring their fluffy insides and talking about how it would be to put butter on them. Far too pricey for our regular meal rotation, a treat saved only for special occasions and maybe holidays, I still like to imagine the stuff and how it would enhance our food.

As the night and blizzard outside wear on, we snuggle down and share the mattress in the living room, tucking ourselves in for the night under a stack of blankets with the dying fire at our feet.

The snow doesn't let up for two more days, and by the time the third day is dawning I am itching to get out of the house. When I wake up on this morning it's to find the windows are clear, unobstructed by a curtain of blustery white flying by. I could whoop from happiness.

I sit up and pull the blankets around myself to keep my cuccoon of warmth secure while I poke at the embers trying to bring them back to life. Some scraps of paper and curls of wood coax back the flames and I shield it with my body from the small draft from under the door. I've just got it going when there is a knock at the door. But it's less of a knock and more of the insistent whump of the side of a fist against the planks that cause my heart to skip a beat.

My grandmother sits bolt upright, her eyes trained on the door and containing no haze of sleepiness. I catch her eye and she puts a finger to her lips, Quiet, she is saying, and the question I had been about to spring remains caught behind my clamped lips. She stands, using a slight rock of momentum to raise herself off the floor and shuffles quietly over to edge of the front window where she can see out onto our porch. She swears under her breath and moves away from the window, her eyes shifting back and forth over the room before she gets to me and grabs my arm to pull me roughly to my feet.

I'm shoved back into the linter room and she closes us in before turning on me. Her eyes are frantic but her voice struggles to remain calm when she speaks.

"Nellis," she says, her words barely above a whisper. "I need you to stay in here and not make a sound. They're going to take me away and I need you to find somewhere safe."

"What?" I stammer out, my hands starting to shake from the icy air in the linter room, even though I'm still wrapped in the blankets.

"Use the liquor," she pushes, urging her words. "Take it to trade and get safe. We can always make more when this is over, but I want you to take care of yourself."

Then it hits me, the people outside must be a pack of Peacekeepers, free now after the storm to collect those who would have been identified by informants as being lawbreakers. I start to push back against her insistent hand but she shoves me away and hisses at me to hide myself before she leaves the room and I hear her heading for the door. In my panic I glance around the room and finally drop to the floor to slither underneath my bed, stripped of it's covering and looking like it doesn't get regular use. I scooch over the floor and press my back against the wall, pulling my legs up and wrapping the blankets even tighter around myself to stop the tremors of fear that are wracking me. I cover my mouth with my hand when I hear the door open and the chaos descends in the living room.

Boots, heavy on the floor and making rough demands. They tell her she's coming with them, that she'll only be needing her shoes and there are a few exchanged words of questions from both sides and my heart is beating so fast that it causes the blood to pound in my ears. They ask her if there's anyone else in the house and I shut my eyes tight praying to whatever watches over us that they believe her when she tells them it's just her.

The one stroke of good grace we are granted is that when she says she's alone, they don't quesiton it. But when the footsteps are shuffling around again, the front door opens and closes on protesting hinges, the silence that follows engulfs me and I am washed by a wave of fear. I lay under the bed for a long time, trying to calm my trembling body and focus on the task at hand. If the authorities believe that she is the only one who lives here, I can't simply hunker down in the house until she returns without attracting attention. I have to go somewhere, seek out help from someone, but there are so few people that I feel like I can trust, and even fewer that I would actually call friends, that I wonder what her plan was.

Slowly the idea comes to me after I begin to tick through the people who would take me in with what I have to trade and who would not rat me out to the Peacekeepers. A twist in my gut accompanies the plan forming in my mind when I start to realize that there is only one option that even comes close to providing me with a safe place to stay. I wish I could say it was the best of the bad options, but I'm not even sure that statement qualifies.

When I finally leave the house, wrapped in layers of two shirts, a sweater, a thick overcoat, and a pair of pants I find in my grandmother's things that I put on under a skirt. I don't know how long I will be gone or how often I will be able to sneak back here, if at all, so it seems best to take as much as I can comfortable wear. A thick hat and mittens complete my get-up and I feel thoroughly disguised if not swaddled for warmth on my small journey.

Outside, the cold air cuts at me but the lack of wind is a welcome sign and I go around to the leeward side of the house where the cart holding our extra liquor is waiting for me under a makeshift lean-to. I take up a burlap sack and put as many of the bottles as I can carry into it, tying it closed when I've reached my limit and making sure that I can manage it all in my arms. It's the only way to carry everything without them all clinking together. I take the few bottles that are left back inside to hide them in the space under the floor. But instead of leaving everything behind I tuck two bottles into the waist of my pants and cinch them into place with a belt. I will have to move slowly to keep them from falling out, but I will manage, and they are well hidden by my many layers.

Using our thin broom to sweep away my tracks in the snow, I erase the traces of my presence from outside and stash the broom in the lean to before heading out to the road before traffic picks up.

I've made this trek once before during a hot summer when my grandmother sent me on an errand to drop off an extra few bottles of liquor that had been paid for that day but were needed from the home stock. She usually made these deliveries herself when they were needed, but her bones were giving her aches that particular evening so I was sent instead. The hot day had broken by the time I'd set off and I took a small amount of enjoyment in the walk and let my mind savor the quiet and cleaner smells of the short walk out of town.

Things were different in the winter, with the snow already piled on either side of the road by crews that must have been working since the moment it stopped snowing. The quiet of the fresh snow rests lightly on the surroundings and I make my way hoping not to run into anyone else. I pass under the gates to the ring of the twelve large houses around the buried lawn, and I let out a small sigh of relief. I go to his house, the only one I've ever had cause to know in any way, and knock the snow from my boots when I ascend the stairs. The porch is clean of snow, kept that way from the direction the house faces and the way the snow blew up in drifts on the back but avoided the front porch.

My knocks go unanswered, even though I finally take to pounding on the door and I wonder where he could be. I look around, take in the pair of rocking chairs at the other end of the porch. Then I see the sets of footprints leading from the other houses across the lawn and back to the road. He must not be home. I pull a rocking chair over to the front door and set my bag of liquor down by my feet, shaking out my arms after the effort of carrying it all the way here.

It's not so bad in the chair in the shelter of the porch and I nestle into my layers to wait. He will come back eventually, and I will be here when he does.


	4. Chapter 4

It's not long before the sound of voices drifts over the snow and reaches me. Hurried voices, buffered by the white and sent along in my direction, of three people who are headed this way. They appear on the road and come through the gates not long after I hear them and I keep myself still and nearly close my eyes to give the impression that I am sleeping. Through the slits in my eyelids I watch them all split off to go their respective houses, and brace myself as the approaching man nears his destination. Even though I am keeping my eyes resolutely shut, I know when he sees me because he mutters a string of curses under his breath that would cause anyone to blush. He stamps his feet on the stairs and when he reaches me on the porch he gives my feet a not so subtle kick that jolts me and I look up at him.

"Hey!" He almost shouts at me before giving me another nudge with his foot. "What're you doing out here?"

He's seething mad, barely containing himself from striking out again and before he can I stand and hold my hands up, palms out, to placate him. He pauses for a moment, searching my face and I realize he must not recognize me in this context. That's when I speak, trying to keep my voice calm so as not to stir him up anymore.

"Haymitch," I say, and there's a flicker of recognition on his face. "I need your help."

"Nellis," He answers a few seconds later when it finally hits him. He takes me in from head to toe, and when his eyes settle on the burlap sack at my feet, the skin between his eyebrows scrunches together and then his gaze comes back to mine.

"They took her," I say. I don't need to explain who I'm talking about, he seems to understand just fine. My voice threatens to break as the reality finally sets in. I have to keep control, to keep my wits about me until I have a safe place to be.

Haymitch's face goes slack, and then he runs a hand through his hair, letting out a long sigh to accompany the new expression on his face. I've never seen it on him before, and maybe it's some kind of pity, but there is something in his eyes that says he's afraid for my grandmother, and by extension, for me.

"I can't help her," he says in what I assume he thinks is a gentle tone, but it just sounds strained. "Whatever they want with her now, there's nothing that I can do."

"I know. That's not exactly why I'm here," I add and he looks confused. "Can we talk?"

For a moment I wonder if he's going to send me away and my thin hope is beginning to fall flat. I implore him with my eyes, on the verge of begging when he nods in agreement. I think it's his curiosity that gets me invited into the house. When I stoop and take hold of the bag, there is the unmistakable sound of the bottles clinking together when I lift them. He tries to hide it, but I see the slight tick of his head at the noise before he opens the door and we head inside. While warmer than outside, the interior of Haymitch's house still feels cold. The main living room seems frozen in time and a chilly air sits still on the fancy furniture.

The house is so different from the other buildings in our district, the juxtaposition of design and build has me staggering to wrap my mind around all the space inside. I'm used to squat structures and rooms that serve purpose, are built for specifics with no room or need for extra design or embellishments. The best word I have for Haymitch's house is 'cavernous'. The ceilings soar above me, easily taller than any other private dwelling I've ever been in. The only structure that comes close to matching this kind of unadulterated use of space is the Justice Building. Both were built by the Capitol though, so I shouldn't be that surprised that such designers would spalsh out on extra building materials for something as simple as a few extra feet over your head in a room.

He leads me into the back of the house where we end up in the kitchen. The space is undeniably warmer than the front of the house and I see the remains of a fire in the huge hearth. That is where the traces of homeliness end. The counters are littered with debris, liquor bottles scattered on the floor and garbage, remains of meals, and scraps of clothing and whatever else finds its way onto the spare spaces is everywhere I look. Haymitch walks into the room proper but I hang back by the door, clutching at my burlap sack still in my arms and giving myself a chance to adjust most of all to the smell of the place. The air is stale and the odors of the kitchen layered on top of the smells of a person just existing in this small part of the house overwhelm me.

Haymitch clears off the table with sweeps of his arms, setting the collected items onto the nearest pile that he finds. He sits down in a chair and nods to one across the table from him. I take the hint and sit down, keeping a tight hold of the bottles, but his gaze drifts to them more and more and I can see a slight hunger beginning in his eyes.

"So," he says, "How about you tell me why you're here." The patience in his voice is stretched thin already and I decide to tread as respectfully as I can and treat this as nothing more than business deal.

"A group of Peacekeepers came for Ripper this morning. They didn't seem to be wasting any time clearing people out who they thought were breaking the law."

"They'll be pushing informants hard at the moment," Haymitch muses almost to himself. He's distracted drawing little circles on the tabletop with the tip of his finger.

"Before we let them in," I continue. "She hid me in the back room, telling me to keep myself silent and to stay hidden. When she let them in they asked if she was alone and she said yes. I don't know why but they believed her. Before she left me she told me to find somewhere safe to stay. I can't be in the house while she's in custody. It would look funny if the house was being used."

I let the words sink in to Haymitch and I can tell he's taking it all in because his finger has stopped it's tracing for the moment. I press on.

"So, I was wondering if I could stay here. Just for a little while."

Haymitch actually laughs. Mocking, yes, but still it breaks some of the tension that I had felt building in my stomach. Instead it morphs quickly into anger and I don't know if I can control myself very much longer if he keeps making fun of me.

"And why should I let you stay here, Nellis?" he says. "Oh, excuse me, Miss Barton. What could possibly be in it for me?"

Now's my chance to hook him in. My voice drops low when I speak and I make my pitch.

"They way I see it, your supply has been effectively cut off." This shuts him up.

"I've got a few bottles left." He replies, clipping his words.

"And when that runs out? Are you prepared to go through withdrawal? Because I'm willing to bet that you aren't. You let me stay here and you can have what is left of our supply until they let my grandmother go and she can get things going again. I'll stay out of your hair, but keep you in liquor until she's released."

He stares at me, his face twisting while he mulls over the offer I've made. I can almost hear the gears clicking as he weighs the pros and the cons of allowing this to happen. To give him another nudge, I move to set the burlap bag of bottles on the table and slide them towards him.

"Haymitch, please." I say so gently, it's the closest I will come to pleading with him.

Finally he lets out a long sigh and presses the heels of his hands against his forehead and gives in.

"Fine," he says and I feel like my whole body droops from obvious relief. "But this place isn't safe either. I can't guarantee that you will be safe here."

"I know," I say but the statement takes me a little by surprise. I will have to reconcile this with my suppositions about the situation but it won't change my resolve to stay. Haymitch reaches into the bag to grab a fresh bottle of liquor and tips it to me in a tiny toast before taking a long drink, signaling the end of our conversation and the sealing of our deal. I lean back in the chair and watch him numb away whatever unimaginable horrors that haunt him.

Once his need is sufficiently met for the moment, he shows me upstairs to what is clearly a corner of the house that hasn't been used in decades, if ever. There is a hallway with several doors, only one of which is open and when we walk by I can glean that this one door must lead to Haymitch's room. The bed I catch a glimpse of is piled with crumpled blankets but I guess he must spend most of his time passed out across the furniture downstairs instead of actually sleeping up here. He leads me down the hall to the last door, the farthest from his, and tells me this is where I can sleep. With a final tip of the bottle he saunters back down the hallway and throws over his shoulder that I should just make myself at home.

The room is a simple spare bedroom but is still more space than I've ever had to myself before. There's a fireplace on one wall and a neat stack of wood that as far as I can tell has never been touched. I find matches on the mantle and build a small fire that warms the room quickly. I strip off layers until I am down to one long sleeve shirt and my skirt that hits me just at my knees. The two bottles of liquor I had hid on my person are wrapped in a sweater I find in the closet and shoved as far into the dark corner of a high shelf as I can manage. They will have to stay hidden.

Wrapping myself in the cushy comforter off the bed I lay down on the mattress and almost sink into it. I'm asleep before I know it, the weight of the days events finally exhausting me. It's a blessing to find rest so quickly as I don't have time to think about what could come, I just let myself go and get lost in the relative calm for now.


	5. Chapter 5

I sleep on through the evening, waking a few hours into the deep night to stir the fire again and stoke up the flames until they are crackling once again. The room keeps the heat in well but I keep myself wrapped in the comforter while I let my mind wander in the quiet that has descended on the house. Well, semi quiet. Even though plenty of distance separates us, every so often disconnected sounds will come up through the house and make their way to me. Shouts, cackles, even what I think is the occasional outburst of frustration. Evidence that Haymitch is still awake, though how aware he is I can't say for sure.

I consider this place, consider what I have gleaned of him these past few years, and I realize that I don't really know Haymitch Abernathy at all. At best, we have been on the periphery of each other's lives, interacting only when I would begrudgingly handle his transactions at The Hob. Or when he would venture to our house in the middle of the night. I never once considered what his life was like, something I never extended to our other patrons either. How long has he kept himself locked up in the self imposed prison? I think about how he sticks to one corner of the house like he is carving out a home within the walls of the larger one. Maybe it gives him a sense of being somewhere he actually belongs instead of left stranded in this grand building.

My brain eventually exhausts itself again and I slip into a doze until the predawn light begins to sneak in through the gauzy curtain over the window. The room is slowly filling with the cold blue before proper sunrise and I push myself up to watch it begin to come up over the trees that I can see beyond the Victor's Village. My stomach growls in protest and I leave the comforter behind the comforter behind. I put on a pair of thick socks and wrap a thin blanket around my shoulders like a shawl before I venture out into the rest of the house in search of food. It's quiet, still, and I wonder if Haymitch has gone to his own bed.

When I find him at the kitchen table, slumped over with his head resting on one arm and a knife clutched in his other hand, it's not that much of a shock. Treading as silently as I can and giving him a wide berth I move around the table to go and tend to the fire. There's half a loaf of bread sitting on a cutting board on the counter and I slice myself a couple pieces to toast by the fire. Two pieces of the bread go down on the hearth to toast and I sit down cross-legged on the floor and tear a third piece into small bits that I pop into my mouth. I roll the bits of bread around with my tongue, exploring how different it is from the ration loaves that I am used to.

I like its softness and how it seems to spring inside my mouth no matter how I push it around. When I crush it between my teeth it has an inherent nutty flavor that comes out and surprises me. I have seen bread like this in the shop windows of the bakery but never imagined it would be so light. I am so lost to my internal musings over the bread that my mind wanders and I momentarily forget the two pieces on the hearth. That is until his voice brings me back to myself.

"Those'll burn," Haymitch mumbles and his words are still thick and run together like warm molasses. But not from being asleep. When I snap my attention back to him his eyes are shifting back and forth like he's trying to focus on me and he is leaning against his hand hard like he will melt into the table if he doesn't hold himself up. The warmth in his eyes is probably from the liquor, but he's watching me so intently I look away from nerves. I can blame the burning in my cheeks on the heat of the fire when I lean in and flip the almost blackened toast over to get the other side.

"Thank you," I reply quietly and he leans back in his chair. Suddenly he scowls at me, like I've turned into something he can't stand to look at and he turns his attention to the table. Apparently unable to look at me anymore.

"What?" I ask.

"Thought you might have been a dream," he answers, surprisingly coherent for a person who lives under a thick layer of intoxication.

"Like I had made up the whole thing and I'd still be alone," he explains. "But there you are. Sitting on my floor."

"Here I am," I say on the end of a sigh and let my gaze find a spot on a burning log to focus on. Something to hold on to so I don't have to look awkwardly up at him.

"Hey," he says and I finally glance up and he's holding out a bottle to me with a bit of liquour left in it. He must have had it tucked in close to him while he had his head resting on his arm, protected from anyone who might have a notion to steal it. Though I have no idea who he would have to fear. No one would dare tread into this house uninvited. He gives the bottle a little nudge, offering me the drink but I shake my head. Haymitch shrugs and proceed to drain the last of the bottle and then he sets the empty on the table. It's like he's punctuating a sentence. It's so final.

"Not much for the stuff are you, kid?" He says and I shake my head again.

"Hard to keep a supply if you can't stop drinking it," I say and he laughs. It's sloppy and he's all over the place with the timbre. I've been privy to inebriated, lubricated Haymitch, but this is the first chance I'm getting to know truly drunk Haymitch and his flip-flopping personality. He laughs himself out and I go back to my toast, pulling it back away from the flames and stack the two pieces on my knee.

"Are you going to be here long?" he slurs, and I tell him I'm not sure.

"It depends on when they let my grandmother go," I answer.

"No," he says. "I meant, right where you are. You going to be sitting there long?"

I wrap the blanket tighter around myself, protecting myself from his words mostly. "Probably," I answer and he moves to stand up but sways when he's on his feet. It seems for a moment like he is going to topple over. When he finally catches his balance he squints down at me and I wonder if the floor is still swinging in his vision.

"I don't know why you're here," He muses. I feel small here on his floor, dwarfed by the space around us and yet we're crowded together all the same. "It isn't safe here. It isn't safe anywhere."

"You said that before," I reply. "But I've got nowhere else to go."

"Where's the rest of your family?"

"Gone."

The word is enough to convey that it doesn't matter the exact circumstances, the remains of my family have gone the way of so many other folk from out district. I buried each one of them, anger mixed with sadness at the funerals that they were leaving me more and more alone than I had been before. My grandmother was the only one left and now she was gone, too.

The silence stretches on and on but I care less and less.

"I'm going to sleep," he says, I think it's more to himself than to me because he's turning away and heading towards the door, grabbing the knife in his fist on his way out. I don't say anything to his retreating back. I just watch him shuffle off and take small bites of toast and savor the warm food, stretching out the modest meal as long as I can to stay in front of the fire and let the morning come in all around me.

The day stretches before me with no particular promises for anything, a listless feeling fills me as I look around and try to make something of this situation I've found myself in. I finally decide to try and make at least the kitchen a little bit more liveable, thinking that I will be spending part of my time here at least and it might as well be brought up to some kind of standard of cleanliness. I work through the day, doing a first sweep of trash and filth, then scrubbing every surface I can get my hands on with buckets of steaming water that comes from the tap. It gives me a thrill to have hot water at my command, like I'm a magician. That thought makes me laugh a little to myself and each time I empty my bucket in the sink and fill it again I feel like I'm making something of the mess I'm in.

I hum to myself while I work. Most people in our district have some sense of airy music that lilts through our veins and drives us along as we go about our dreary tasks. Music is one of the only things that can usually bring a smile to people's lips and can be shared even when we have nothing else to give. The music and the cleaning take my mind off everything else that is happening and the time passes quickly.

There's a basket of root vegetables in the pantry and I set the up to roast in the fire and finally sit down to rest just as the sun is setting, lighting the sky outside the windows to a brilliant orange. The shadows lengthen and make their way into every corner of the kitchen. I light some candles on the table and make tea and the place actually feels cozy with something cooking and a mug of warm tea clutched in my hand. I pull a rocking chair from the living room and sit by the fire to rest my feet and wait for the food to cook.

Heavy footsteps on the stairs send my nerves spiking and I brace myself for Haymitch's return to the kitchen. He slides his feet along the floor when he crosses the living room and I can hear him clearly yawning and probably stretching out his body.

"What's this," he says when he gets to the kitchen door and I turn around to get a look at him. He's disheveled, wearing loose pants and a long sleeve shirt and his brow in a permanent crease whether from actual confusion about what he finds or from the aftermath of a night of drinking.

"I cleaned your kitchen," I say and he moves into the room. I keep up a slow rhythm of pushing off the floor with my toes to let the rocking chair move back and then tip forward again. Haymitch walks behind me and over to a cupboard that squeaks when he opens it. There's the clink of bottles and then snapping open of the wax seal on the bottle. A chair scraping on the floor and then he's sitting next to me and taking pulls off the bottle. The more alcohol he ingests, the looser his brow becomes and the more the corners of his mouth tip up. I can imagine the tension in his head must be loosening, his joints quieting from their aches, all the things he chooses to ignore behind the liquor.

"Do you want to eat something?" I ask, motioning at the roasting vegetables. Haymitch shrugs, indifferent till the very end of it. He just watches instead while I serve myself when they're ready and then eat my fill. I almost fall asleep in my chair, listening to him take drinks and mumble to himself while the fire begins to die down. As the night chill creeps into the room I pick up a sweater I'd found earlier while cleaning and offer it to him. He brushes it away and inadvertently gives my hands a shove away when I hold it out to him.

I decide to leave him to his drinking. If he's so insistent on being distant even when we're in the same room then I will make it easy for him. I go up to my room and settle myself in for the night, sinking again into that soft bed and trying not to worry about where my grandmother is and what is happening to her, but finding myself unable to think of anything but.

In the morning I find he's eaten the leftovers from my dinner, and has dissapeared to his own space before I come down to meet the day.

Haymitch and I go on like this for almost a week. We barely speak to each other as he spends his nights drinking and I work at bringing warmth back into the house. Every morning I count the bottles of liquor and eventually make a plan to sneak back to the Seam to get what is left in the house. I pick a quiet morning, leaving the house before the sun rises and sneaking back quickly along the road into town and slipping between buildings in the soft snow before Peacekeepers are up and about.

My tiny house is freezing and just as I left it, everything still in it's place. Most likely the neighbors are keeping an eye on it from a distance, but there is an unspoken understanding between those of us down here that stealing from a neighbor is absolutely forbidden. As flimsy as it may seem at times, our small code of honor is sometimes the only thing that holds us together.

Crouching in the liquor cellar, just as the weak sunlight is starting to in through the windows, I count what bottles are left and start to feel anxiety creeping into my veins. I load them into my sack and hide the trap door even though I have emptied the cellar. I can't shake the anxious feeling as I'm headed back to Haymitch's house with the liquor, because how will I tell him that we're almost out? What will happen then?

I get back just as he's making to head upstairs to sleep but he stops when I come through a backdoor to the kitchen with my arms full of the sack of bottles and he smiles at me for the first time since I came to stay here. When I don't return the grin, instead giving him back a pressed look of worry, his grin begins to fade into one of those scowls I'd become accustomed to.

"Haymitch," I say, leaning my back against the door for support. "We've got a problem."


	6. Chapter 6

"Problem?" Haymitch repeats back at me and I can only nod. He glances at the bag in my arms and I think it begins to come to him what I am going to say.

"This is the last of the liquor from my house," I say slowly. "There's no sign that there is going to be more coming any time soon. I'm sorry, Haymitch, but we're going to have to make this last."

He just stares at me while he leans against the door frame, probably thinking on what harsh word he is going to throw at me. But when he keeps silent, I move over to the counter and start lining up the bottles. When the bag is empty, I go into the cupboard and take out the few remaining bottles and add them to the line. I step back and let Haymitch take it in. There are so few bottles left. So little remains of the stash that I had brought and the stash that I had promised.

"That's all of it?" Haymitch finally says.

"Yes," I answer, but in the back of my mind are those two bottles I snuck into the house. They're still tucked back in the closet and I haven't made any mention of them in all the time that I have been here. I've meant for them to be a kind of insurance if the situation ever arose, and now I'm beginning to wonder if this is it. I decide to keep them a secret for now though. I can't give all my cards up just yet.

Over the next few days I know that Haymitch is trying to make the store last because the depletion slows down. It doesn't stop, but he's trying to stretch the bottles out and make them last as long as he can. On the flip side, the less he tries to drink, the meaner he gets. Whenever we are in the same room he lashes out at me, so I take to lurking around the corners and trying to avoid any direct contact with him. But as the days go by, his hands start to shake more, his body rebels, and I start to worry more. As awful as he can be, I know that the coming withdrawal is going to be terrible and no one should have to go through that alone. I start to follow his schedule, staying up all night listening to him rage and sleeping during the day.

The bottles dwindle, and then eventually they run out.

It's a rare moment that we're both sitting in the kitchen together when he empties the last bottle. He sets it in the middle of the table and settles himself back in his chair, sitting with his hands resting on the back of his neck and staring at the bottle like he can will it to fill up again. With the last bottle of liquor gone, I am not bound to our deal any longer and neither is he. But he hasn't told me to leave, and I haven't made any moves to. I feel scared for him, for what his own body will put him through before he comes out on the other side of this.

He makes it upstairs to his room as the night really settles in and I retreat to my room to rest but I leave the door open just in case. I'm dozing lightly when I hear the noise coming from his room. Strange to my ears, I pad down the hallway and slip through the open door to enter his room. I haven't touched this space since I came to live here. It was always unspokenly off limits and I let it be. There are piles of clothes, all over the floor and the bed is a mess of blankets and bunched up sheets. I go over to the bathroom door and find him lying on his side on the tile floor. His knees are drawn up and his hands are clenched into fists, his body shaking and his eyes are clenched shut.

I don't think twice about going to him, kneeling down next to him and putting my hand on the space between his shoulder blades. His skin is damp even through his shirt and when my touch registers in his brain he scooches away on the floor, groaning against the pain in his body. I settle myself on the floor next to him and lean against the side of the tub, trying to make myself comfortable on the cold floor. I'm not very successful.

I've dozed off with my head resting on my arm the first time Haymitch vomits. He's still on his side and it's the retching that wakes me up. His body contorts, curling more into a ball as his stomach empties on the floor.

"Haymitch!" I say and put my arm underneath his and try to pull him by his armpit. He is gasping for breath between dry heaves, coughing and sputtering. I try to drag him, but he's so much heavier than I am that I have little luck moving him on my own. I can't get him all the way to the toilet by myself.

"You have to help me," I urge, holding my face close to his ear so there is no chance he will miss my words. He nods and pushes at the floor with his hands, but there is little strength in his movements. The shaking and bout of vomitting have zapped his energy. But we work together and when he pushes I help pull him and eventually we make it to the toilet and prop him up against it. I brush his hair back away from his face and settle his head against his arm to rest, helping him position it so that if he starts to throw up again it will go into the toilet instead of on the floor.

I grab a towel from a rack on the wall and start to clean up the mess, wiping up everything and then balling the towel and running it down to the hallway bathroom and leave it in the shower where I will wash it later. When I come back to him, he looks up at me with confusion in his eyes, but when I sit behind him on the edge of the tub and put a hand on his shoulder, he doesn't pull away. He's still shaking, his breathing labored and ragged, but I press my thumb along the curve of his shoulder blade hoping the small gesture will be of some comfort to him.

Then I start to hum, a quiet lullaby meant to ease someone's suffering and through the melody I can hear Haymitch start to cry. The sound reaches inside me and I feel pity for him. "It's all right," I whisper. "You're gonna be okay." I don't know who I'm trying to reassure, because when he suddenly lurches forward and heaves again into the toilet, I close my eyes and feel tears slip down my cheeks. He's heaving violently, bile forcing it's way out of him until it seems like he will be expelling his lungs with every heave.

When he stops, his breathing seems to slow and settle out, like we are getting a respite from the violence of the withdrawal. I decide to run a warm bath, and he leans back to where he can watch me running the water, holding my hand beneath the stream to make sure it isn't too hot. His eyes are bloodshot, and I avoid looking directly into them. It's difficult though to keep that up when I help him to his feet, his body swaying when I reach down and pull up the hem of his shirt and lift it up and over his head. The fabric is drenched in sweat and he starts to shake again almost immediately when the cool air hits his clammy skin.

He reaches for his belt on his own while I hold him steady, and my eyes catch on the thick scar that runs across his belly, right over where his intestines would be. It stretches from one side of him to the other, a deep slice that must have opened him almost completely. It causes the breath in my throat to catch, and it sinks in to me that something like this can only come from one place.

"They can fix them now," he says but his voice is so broken and raspy that it takes me back. I feel my cheeks flush from embarassment at him catching me staring at the scar, but I don't offer an apology.

"Why don't you?" I ask but he doesn't answer. His eyes focus on me and they are so filled with sorrow and despair that I don't push him for an answer. Instead I help him into the tub and he settles down into the warm water and I sit next to the tub.

"You don't have to stay," he whispers. I look at him, a sad and sorry mess of a man whose suffering is probably only going to get worse and I know that he is wrong. I have to stay. I can't leave him now.

"I know," I reply but behind those words is an undercurrent of strength that I want him to feel. I will anchor him to this place for now, keeping watch over him while he is so sick. I don't want him to feel alone.

After the bath, I find the cleanest clothes that I can and together we get him settled into bed. He's shaking again, a little less this time and I think that maybe he will be able to get a few hours of rest. I sit next to wear he lies on the bed with my back against the headboard. I rest a hand on his head, stroking his hairline with my thumb in a uiet rhythm that his synchs his breaths to and eventually drifts to sleep. I'm not far behind, but before I give in to my own fatigue I feel the beginning of guilt forming at the back of my mind. I have the two bottles still in the closet. Two bottles that could ease his suffering, but we would just end up here again in a matter of days, if that.

I am trying to do the right thing, and I fall asleep with that as the last thing that I tell myself before I slip away.


	7. Chapter 7

I wake before Haymitch, a crick in my neck insistently pulling me out of sleep. I rub the muscles, hoping to ease some of the tension but finding little relief in the motion. He hasn't moved, still lying beneath my hand that has long since stopped tracing his hairline. I wonder if my touch registers at all with him, whether or not he can feel it through the haze he's under. There is a bird in the tree outside the window closest to the bed, I can see it through a gap in the curtains, and it sings a quiet pattern in the dawn.

I extricate myself from the bed, stretching my arms up over my head and then bending over and letting my upper body hang while I press my palms against the floor. Every part of me aches and protests at the movements, but I have to take advantage of this precious time while Haymitch is sleeping to prepare. I slip down to my room, and change into a plain dress that I find in a drawer. It's dark brown, with elbow length sleeves and a skirt that falls just to my knees. I'm surprised by it's simplicity, assuming that it was left here by the Capitol for someone they thought might live here one day. In the bathroom that's starting to smell like the towel I used to clean up the vomit, I wash my face and retie my long, dark hair in a bun at the base of my neck. I take in the dark circles forming under my eyes, the way there seems to be a permanent worry at their corners, and give myself a nod before I leave the bathroom.

The kitchen is cold when I arrive and a light snow has started to fall. I stir the coals and stoke a flame to rise again, putting on a kettle of water for tea when it's caught. There's a chicken carcass from a roast I made the day before and I put that into a pot of water and set it over the fire, hoping to coax a broth from the bones by the evening. I'm just pulling one of Haymitch's discarded sweaters on and rolling up the sleeves when I hear the cries.

High pitched and agonized, screams that cut rather than drift, through every wall in the house and my blood is frozen with fear. I stand, rooted to the spot, hoping against my better judgement that it was a one time event. But when another scream rips through the house I fly, tearing back upstairs and throwing open the door to Haymitch's room. The bed is empty and I look frantically around from the doorway but can't see him.

"Haymitch," I call and walk around the side of the bed, then I finally spot him. He's curled himself into a corner and has his knees drawn all the way up to his chest with his arms wrapped around his legs and he's shaking again. I say his name another time but he doesn't seem to notice. When I approach I keep talking to him, let him know that it's just me who has come to see him and nothing else. I am not a threat. He covers his face with his hands and starts to groan something through clenched teeth. Over and over I repeat that he's okay, that I'm okay. Trying to reassure him. But when I reach him and kneel down in front of him his eyes find me through the spaces between his fingers and what little I can see they are frantic. Wild. Unhinged.

I reach out and touch the back of his hand with the tips of my fingers and what happens next is so fast that I barely have time to react. When my fingers hit his skin he lashes out at me, hitting me solid in the chest and sending me onto my back on the floor. I am stunned, afraid, and roll away from him to try and push myself across the floor. He's coming at me again, reaching for me and grabs hold of my arm. His hand leaves a slick of blood on my skin and that's when I see he's holding his knife in a death grip. He must have cut himself, but in the commotion I can't tell where exactly.

I try to pull my arm away from him but he's holding on so tight that I can't free myself. He's so much stronger than I am, the bulk of his bigger body and a hidden strength keeping me in his grasp no matter how much I try to break free from his grip. The knife in his fist keeps flashing and keep one eye on it while scrambling to get away from him.

"Haymitch!" I almost scream at him. "Haymitch, please let go! It's me! Nellis!"

"Shut up!" he screams back and his pupils are flitting back and forth, trying to focus on anything he can. They stick on my face, but no, not directly on me, something just to the right of my head. I glance behind me but there's nothing. Looking back at him I see he's caught, frozen in fear, and that's when my stomach sinks. I've heard of this, the hallucinations that can come when someone is deep in withdrawal. We call them The Horrors, when people are overcome by things that only they can see.

With Haymitch focused for the moment I take the chance and pry his fingers from my arm. I scooch back but he's reaching for me again but this time I'm ready. I push him in the chest with my foot and then launch myself towards the door. My push back caught him off guard and has given me enough of a headstart that I make it to the door and slam it before he runs into it. He's crying out, screaming again at whatever spectre has appeared. He slams his body against the door a few more times and with each blow I feel it resonate through my whole being. I lean my back against the door and let my body slide down, settling in a heap on the floor. His blood is still on me, and I wipe desperately at it with the edge of the sweater but it persists.

The world begins to blur and I can't stop my tears that are falling freely now. I stay there on the floor, my side pressed against the door listening to every cry and call for help that comes through to my ears. I pull into myself and start to rock back and forth. I press my palms against my ears and try desperately to shut out the destruction on the other side of the door. It feels like hours before he exhausts himself, coming to rest on the other side of the door. I can almost feel the way his breaths are tearing through his system.

It would be so easy to give him some of the liquor I have stored away. So easy to pull out those bottles and cure him of his illness. But it would only be a band aid on this gaping wound inside him, something that I'm coming to realise will never be fully healed. I know that I have a measure of responsibility for how we've ended up, but there is a part of me that also feels like if I stay and help him through this, I can find some absolution.

I don't know how long we have until the next onslaught of attacking memories, so I have to work quickly.

I force myself off the floor and go back downstairs to the small bathroom off the kitchen, my mind intent on a small bottle that I came across earlier in the week and stashed in a drawer underneath hand towels. The tiny bottle of sleep syrup, fitted with a dropper sits cool in my palm and when I close my fingers around it I feel like there is a light at the end of this darkness. I just have to get it in him. I brew a strong cup of tea, lacing mint together with licorice and hoping that the strong flavors will mask some of the sweetness of the medicine.

When I get back to the room, my laced tea mug in my hand, I take a deep breath and steel myself before I turn the handle and open the door. It's quiet inside the room and I move in slowly, not wanting to startle Haymitch and send him spiraling out of control again. He's sitting on the floor next to the door, his legs sprawled in front of him and his hands are slack at his sides, the knife held loosely in the hand closest to me. I close the door and lean against it again, then kneel down beside him. He turns his head my way and his eyes struggle to focus on me but eventually when he does his face breaks into a lopsided grin.

"Ah," he drawls and his voice is scratchy and broken. "The kid remains." He tries to laugh but winces instead like the effort pains him. Every slight move of his head seems to bring some kind of reaction that looks like he's struggling to maintain his upright position.

"Don't try to be funny," I say and take his hand, moving the knife out of his fingers and raising them up to wrap around the mug. "Humor was never your strong suit."

When I get the mug in his hand I press it between mine, there's a moment when I look into his eyes and they are focused on mine. He's not smiling anymore but he isn't scowling either. I am so used to those two expressions that it's taking me a minute to get used to this new one. We keep eye contact while with my help he raises the mug and takes a sip of the tea. His brows go together at once and then he coughs.

"You tryin' to kill me?" he says between sputters but keeps taking drinks of tea.

"That's more like you," I say and he takes a long pull. His eyelids are starting to droop, and his face begins to relax as the medicine starts to take hold. I take the mug back from him and set it down on the floor before he can drop it, then go into the bathroom to wet a hand towel to clean him up. I sit just to the side and facing him, and he doesn't resist when I take his hand and pull it into my lap. I wipe the blood from the back of his hand first and then turn it over to clean his palm. His hands are covered in callouses and cuts that have left thin scars criss-crossing the lines of his skin. They come to prominence with each swipe of the cloth and I wonder if he's ever considered how his body gives testimony to what he's been through.

My arm still bears the impression of his fingers from where he had held on to me, small bruises that are starting to rise under the thin skin of my wrist. While working I keep my focus on his hands but I can feel his eyes watching me. I don't know how present he is in the moment but it's okay.

Suddenly he reaches over and lightly touches one of the marks on my wrist, his fingers careful but still taking me by surprise. I hold my breath, wondering briefly if he is going to turn violent again. But the sleep syrup is doing it's job, keeping him slightly sedated and all he seems to want to do is soothe whatever harm he did before. He doesn't offer any words of apology but there isn't much to say anyways so we let ourselves be held in a spell of quietly caring for one another.

My nerves begin to relax, easing their hold on me and I think that we will make it through this.


	8. Chapter 8

It takes a few days, but slowly I ease back Haymitch's dose of sleep syrup until he can stand to be awake for more than five minutes without having some kind of terror gripping him. His condition improves as the days pass until a week has gone by and the only reminder of his ordeal is a slight shaking of his hands. He keeps them buried in his pockets or his arms crossed with his hands hidden so that they can't be seen. I think he can't stand to see himself shake. I stay on, even though I am not obligated, just to make sure that he will be all right.

There is a palpable shift in the air in the way we conduct ourselves around each other. While coming down from The Horrors, while his hands were still shaking so bad he could barely hold a mug on his own, I helped him eat soup by holding the spoon for him. When the nausea surfaced again even though his other symptoms were receding, I put my hand on the spot between his shoulder blades when he was awake through one night throwing every bit of food back up. I stay close to him, within reach if he ever asks but we actually do very little talking. It's enough for us to be near one another.

I get him to leave the house, take short walks with me, even though his energy is still lacking. I push food on him, try to fill him up with bread and stew and anything else I can get into him so that he will replace the need for alcohol with things that will sustain him. The looks he gives me tells me that he is just itching to throw some kind of sarcastic comment out, but he resists and I think it's because now there is something tangible between us. Whether he likes it or not, I am privy to his most vulnerable moments and there is a responsibility and trust that comes with that. I will not sell him out or betray the understanding that what has transpired within this house should not be shared.

One afternoon, Haymitch decides we should go to town on our walk. I don't know what for, and it makes me nervous to wander that close to so much trouble. I haven't been by the house in a good while, the last time I did there were more Peacekeeper patrols than I had ever seen before, roaming around the Seam and rooting any person for any reason they saw fit. Whispers were passed over back fences and in close contacts between people that more and more people were being whipped and held in the stocks, almost without cause. We all kept our eyes resolutely on the ground to avoid stirring up trouble. It's like living amongst hives of angry bees that require slow moves, low voices, and calm demeanors to ward off any trouble.

But today, I feel slightly safer by Haymitch's side. Still, I tuck my hair up under a wool cap and layer myself under sweaters and coat again to disguise myself. It won't hurt to be cautious. My street seems busy today, a group of kids are gathered in the middle of the street, entrenched in one game or another. Parents watch from the porch or from the front windows, keeping an eye to make sure that no one causes to many problems.

We stop by my house first and I notice that the stoop and porch have collected a fair bit of snow since the last time I stopped in. I go inside but Haymitch watches me from the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders turned up against the chill in the air. We're in the thick of winter and the seals along the windows and in the cracks of the house seem to be holding up. Usually during this season we have cause to repair them several times, with the heating and cooling of the house but this year since it's sat unoccupied during the cold it seems like we will be spared that.

My neighbor, Arlen, a middle aged woman, comes over to see about the commotion in the house. She looks pleased to see me and we embrace but she seems to hesitate as well. She tells me it's a common enough thing these days, always watching over your shoulder or keeping to yourself in case someone might be turning you in. I feel pained for them, the people who had nowhere to go and have been kept under the thumb these past weeks. She keeps glancing around while she talks, telling me about the mine closure and the food shortages. We've missed so much being locked up in the Victor's Village. I look at Haymitch but his features are a composition that is impossible to read.

As we make our way towards the square, it sits worse and worse with me all that has transpired since that morning I stole away. Most people we run into have that thin, desperately stretched appearance that comes when the greater food supply is so uncertain. We can see through the windows of the shops that the majority of shelves are bare, and the ones that have food are sparsely stocked. Haymitch turns us down streets and alleys, keeping a low profile that must have come out of practice. He ducks in and out of stores and I wonder what he's searching for even though his pockets seem to be filling with different items. He must can't need very much, the house is still stocked to the brim and I think he's probably doing what he thinks is right and helpful in the situation. Still it feels futile.

I want to swing by home again and we circle around as the afternoon is wearing on. The shadows are beginning to lengthen as we turn down my street and there is a change in the air. The kids are gone and the air feels tense. I can't tell if that's another new normal or if I am imagining it. Haymitch slows his pace and I look up at my house to see a thin trickle of smoke coming from the chimney. My heart lilts as my mind races immediately to the conclusion that my grandmother is home and I move to brush past Haymitch. Just as I'm about to get ahead of him he puts a hand out on my arm and stops me.

"Wait," he whispers and keeps our pace even as we come up to the house.

"What?" I say but he shushs me and keeps his eyes on the house as we walk by. "Haymitch, let me go." I try to pull my arm away but he holds on and keeps me moving with him. I look frantically at the house and notice then that the front door is open. Not just partially ajar, but wide open. I didn't leave it like that, and my grandmother would never be so careless as to leave it agape it such frigid weather.

"Keep moving," he hisses at me and I begin to understand why he won't let me run to the house. It's a strange set-up, the open door and the presence of smoke but with the door open, it's highly suspect. When we pass by he urges me to keep my eyes forward and to match his pace but I'm finding it hard enough to breath normally. We turn the corner at the end of the street and from our place we can see down to the back of the house where there is a pair of Peacekeepers waiting at the back of the house. I catch the briefest glimpse of them before Haymitch has his hand on the small of my back and is practically shoving me along in the opposite direction.

He keeps us moving at a brisk pace until we're well away from town and on the road to the Village before he slows to catch his breath. It comes in hot puffs as he takes big gasps of the frozen air. I'm starting to feel panic rising in me and I can barely wait for him before my questions start to spill out.

"Haymitch, what was that?" I say and his face grows stern.

"What do you think it was," he starts. "They were waiting for us."

"Why?"

"Who cares," he says and starts to walk again, this time slow enough to give us plenty of time before we will come to his place but we continue to move.

"Might've been tipped off that you actually do in fact exist and they want to question you. Who knows but it's not like they need that much of a reason to drag someone in." He takes a deep breath and collects himself, trying to find the words to help me understand why someone would betray another person like this.

"Nellis, people are scared," he says. "It used to be bad. Not as bad as this but you get the idea. When people get like this they will do anything to help themselves. You've seen what people do when they get desperate. Now just imagine how hard it would be to resist if you're offered food in exchange for information."

I do know what lengths some will go to when they're pushed to the brink. I think of the line of women who would sell themselves just to eat. At the people who chase after stray dogs or cats just for a meal. My body is numb with the uncertainty before me, of being possibly wanted by the authorities for questioning and how unlikely it will be that I will be able to return home any time soon. I want to sink to the ground and bury my face in my hands, to cry in frustration at the unfairness of it. But instead I just follow Haymitch in silence and listen to him rattle off how I can still stay at the house, that as long as I stay hidden I may have a chance at saving my own skin.

There's little left to say when we're back at his place. I drift upstairs to my room and even though he calls after me I don't even pretend like I am interested. It hurts to think that I may never go back to what little life I had managed to carve out before, that I have no choice but to hide and cower like a defeated soul.

Despite my rules I decide that I just want to check out for awhile. I go to my room and build a fire to get warm again, hoping that some of the numbness will be dispelled by the flames. I dig out one of the bottles of liquour and crack it open, taking a drink that runs down me and sets every part of my throat on fire and then lands warm in my stomach. It doesn't take long on an empty stomach to start to feel the room sway and when I do I screw the cap back on and set the bottle on the table beside my bed.

I can count on one hand the number of times that I've been intoxicated. My limbs are fuzzy and I sink into the bed and wrap myself in blankets and try to block out the world. Everything seems to come at me in ebbs and flows, either rushing up or pulling back for another blow like waves of memories on my consciousness. When I start to cry it's quiet, but then builds in a crescendo that sees me lying with my fists balled in the sheets and my face pressed into the pillow and screaming. I hate it all. Everything about what life is and how I have been robbed.

Then there are hands, rough fingertips like sand paper wiping at the tears on my cheeks and sitting me up, pulling the blanket around me to contain my gasps for breath and I'm being carried. The world tips and bobs while I travel down the hall and into that room that smells familiar and seems to calm me. Then I'm placed down again on a mattress and the spinning behind my eyes slows a little. Humming, probably from me, of a song that I knew once a long time ago just after I was married. Memories of happy smiles of laughter and I grip the fabric under my palms trying to get a grip on reality again.

But there is a body next to me, Haymitch's rough voice coming through to me and it's him laughing, not the memories anymore. His fingers on my forehead and running through my hair are the last thing that I am fully aware of before I give myself over to sleep.

All sense of time is lost and I am disoriented when I wake up. My eyes hurt and it's like someone is yanking the backs of my eyeballs. I remind myself that this is why I don't drink.

I'm lying in Haymitch's bed and he's sitting beside me, his face slack and his eyes glazed over. And empty bottle is between us, and when he sees me stirring he smiles but there is nothing warm about it.

"You, kid" he almost sneers, "have been keeping secrets."


	9. Chapter 9

"Where did that come from?" Haymitch says and points at the empty bottle lying on the blanket between us. There is no amusement in his voice or expression. I push myself up into a sitting position and lean against the headboard, an ache shooting from the base of my neck up into my head that makes me close my eyes tight and take a couple deep breaths. My stomach twists when my hand reaches for the bottle and I curl it back close to me. He watches me, ready to strike if I say or do the wrong thing. I hold the bottle against my chest, gripping it tightly.

"I can explain," I say and then wait for him to make some kind of remark to set me off beat. I hesitate before launching into an explanation but the silence stretches out until I realize he is just going to wait me out. I tell him I brought it from home when I first came here and was saving it for the right time when it was needed. I deliberately choose to omit the fact of the presence of the second bottle. I'd moved it last night, securing it under a loose floor board in the back of the closet.

Haymitch listens patiently with his hands folded in his lap. The patch of skin between his eyebrows is crinkled and they are drawing closer together as he focuses on what I'm telling him. Every few words he nods and seems to put all the pieces together, never once interrupting or asking for any kind clarification. When I'm finished, he gets out of bed and takes evenly measured steps around the room until he comes over to me and closes his fingers around my elbow. Without saying a word he pulls me out of bed and to my feet, then we leave his room and head down the hall towards mine. His silence begins to trouble me but I don't say anything to try and draw him out.

When we're standing side-by-side in my room, he lets go of my elbow and pushes his hands into his pockets. I'm still clutching the empty bottle and I wring my hands around it to try and calm myself.

"Now," Haymitch finally says in that even tone. "How about you get the rest of the stuff you're hiding."

My blood runs cold and I swallow the fear that grips my throat. I try to stay calm.

"There's no more," I say but it comes out in almost a whisper.

"Say that again?" he says, leaning in closer to me.

"There's no more," I insist, my voice gaining some strength when I turn and look straight into his eyes. The corners of his mouth tip up just slightly but his eyes are burning with anger.

"Oh," he says. "Well, then."

Haymitch walks over to the dresser and leans over to pull out the drawers closest to the floor. He tips the contents of each one onto the floor, never-worn clothes spilling out into piles that grow as he empties each drawer. He discards the drawers by tossing them across the room and each time one hits the floor and skids to a stop against the wall I jump a little, almost like he's reaching out and striking me. When he finds nothing but the clothing he turns on me again.

"Where is it," he says. Hard malice, his voice pulled taught from his barely concealed rage. I shake my head in response.

He moves to the bedside table, opening the single drawer and throwing that as well. It flings to a spot a few feet from me and I move to the side to get away from him. There's a new dent in the wall. When he finds nothing he tips the table over and kicks it away. He pulls the covers off my bed and then strips the sheets and adds those to the piles of clothing. His hands run over the surface of the mattress and then he drags it off the bed to look at the box spring. There's the glint of a knife in his hands and then he stabs it into the mattress, pulling it down and leaving large gashes that start to spill the contents on to the floor.

Haymitch tears through the room, yelling over and over again "Where is it?" and finding new places to rip open and expose to his desperate gaze. I start to tremble, hanging on to the empty bottle and wishing a chasm would open up in the floor beneath me and swallow me whole. When he stops, standing in the tiny spot in the very middle of the room that isn't littered with destruction, his face contorts with a sudden surge of emotion. He pushes his fingers up into his hair and shuts his eyes so tight, grimacing and pulling at his hair like he wants to concentrate the pain in his body and spirit into a single place. That kind of all encompassing pain overwhelms a person, and sometimes you need to concentrate it in one particular area.

"I'm sorry," I say and the words are as weak as they sounded in my head the moment before I said them. Haymitch looks up at me and he seems like he is on the verge of crying and pummeling something all at the same time.

"Sorry?" he says. I nod in response.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you. I was only trying to help," I say.

Haymitch laughs, but it's cruel and filled with years of hating that phrase and that word, 'help', like he thinks he doesn't need any. Like he doesn't have complete control of how he handles his life.

"You don't get to decide that for me," he says slowly when he finally comes back to himself. "No one gets to decide what I do."

"You were so sick-" I start to say but he cuts me off with a quick movement across the room and comes at me, I back up against the wall and he ends up with his hands pressed to the wall on either side of me. Trapping me.

"What happens to me doesn't concern you," he cuts through me with his words and the ferocity in his eyes silences whatever response I could have mustered. His physical presence is so immediate and combative that my heart races. I am keenly aware of the muscles in his arms and how they are pulled and stretched tight like the strings on a fiddle and the warmth his body exudes being so close to mine.

"Haymitch," I whisper but my voice cracks and he scowls.

"You can't help me," he says. "And I can't protect you from anything. I never could. I don't protect people. The people around me always end up the same way." The phrase remains unfinished because his words taper off and I can feel the burden of loss radiating from him. The solitaryyears of watching kids go off to slaughter and the guilt of his part in it sits heavy on his shoulders. But how could you ask someone to be a part of something so awful, to help you make sense of something that has no meaning and only brings sadness? There must have been others, a family he lost along the way, maybe friends, cut out of his life by choice, or perhaps not, in an attempt to isolate him.

Loss is painful, but being ripped from your life and forced into another where you ultimately become part of a killing machine must have been excrutiating. The first seeds of understanding him are planted inside me and I can feel the world begin to shift beneath my feet.

His hands slip down the wall coming to rest somewhere closer to my sides and he leans his head in and rests his forehead against the wall, the side of his head next to mine. I can smell the soap from his shirt, laundered in the last few days by my hands and laid out for him to find when he can. I tip my head forward and let it rest where his shoulder curves up and becomes his neck, just at the collar of his shirt. His skin is warm, up close it smells like snow and woodsmoke and sweat. I turn my head into it and my lips rest against his skin. He's taking deep, even breaths, and I let myself synch to his rhythm. I let the bottle slip to the floor and then slowly let my hands drift up and then settle on his shoulders. He tenses briefly but then relaxes, a reflex probably but I don't move once my hands have settled on him.

Something inside him seems to stir and he pushes his hands against the wall and moves back away from me. I feel cold with the sudden absence of him and I want to hang on to him as he draws away but I let him slip from beneath my hands. He looks empty when he draws away and his shoulders slump. He's deflated, pushed down by the weight of his past.

"Please leave," he says and the request cuts through me.

It feels like I've been punched in the chest and for a moment I can't quite catch my breath. I can't blame him for being angry at me and I think in the back of my mind I realized this was probably going to be the outcome of our arrangement. Once the liquor ran out I would have to leave. But I can't account for the slight panic I am feeling that's rising from my belly to the back of my throat, or the way I felt a strange calm in the storm of his closeness a moment ago.

"Okay," I answer and gather myself to go. I tell myself not to look back, to move with purpose and to exit the room with as much dignity as I can muster. This is, after all, his space and I am just a guest. I don't glance back, but I know he is watching every move that I make.

I can't tell if my shaking is from the cold creeping in to the house or from the emotions that are wreaking havoc in my veins. I wrap myself in my coats and hat, leaving on his sweater that I've been wearing and wraping the clothes tightly about myself, trying to comfort myself. The cold air outside provides a sting in my lungs that seems to snap me out of my daze but I find myself drifting down the road towards town, scuffing my feet every once in awhile again like an absent minded child kicking a pebble down the road. My mind flits back and forth from tracking my direction to the house I have left behind and wondering about it's occupant. That nag still sits uncomfortably on me, especially the way I had felt Haymitch's pulse on his neck with my lips.

My feet turn on their own down my street and carry me up the stairs to my house. I don't notice the clean stairs, the swept porch, before I open the door on squeaky hinges and find warm air hitting me in the face. It draws me up short. The sight that meets my eyes is a relief.

My grandmother is kneeling in front of a healthy fire and she's poking at it to spread out the burning logs, readying it for cooking most likely. She looks nervously at the door when I open it and her eyes go wide with surprise.

"Gran!" I exclaim and close the distance between us in a few swift steps and wrap my arms around her. She holds me close, clutching me with her one arm and when she finally pulls away she looks frantic.

"You shouldn't have come back here, shouldn't have come back," she says quick and quiet and she's putting her hand on my chest and there are tears at the corners of her eyes. I don't understand, can't figure out this emotion at our reunion.

That is until I feel the heavy hand on my upper arm. The fingers tightening around my bicep and turning me on the balls of my feet. I am face to face with the Peacekeeper, his mouth eager with the reward of a long awaited catch finally in his grasp.

"Nellis Barton," he says and I can feel the blood and whatever warmth was left, drain from my face. "You're coming with me."


	10. Chapter 10

I can't stop running my fingers through my hair. Partly because they slip easily through it but mostly because they run out of hair right above my shoulders. Where just a few days ago there were long tresses falling to my waist, now there is a crop of uneven ends and hastily chopped sections that end suddenly. When my fingers fumble with the new line of my hair, a distinct pang resonates in the pit of my stomach and sends ripples through my body and my mind. They cut it during my first interrogation. A series of questions asked me by a spectacled man who seemed nonthreatening, although his tone was flat and devoid of any emotion. I answered as best I could while he took sparse notes on a pad of paper. When it was over he thanked me and left the room. That's when the chaos had broken around me.

People materializing from somewhere behind me, held me down pressing my forehead against the table and yelling. Always yelling. My breaths came quick and shallow, panic, they held my hands behind my back, twisting me and keeping me pinned. Then the scissors, shearing my hair close, the sounds scaring me more than I knew they should. They pulled me up, and I saw the frame of hair on the table, the ground, a new but horribly familiar lightness of my being at having my hair so short. Then my tears while they dragged me down to the holding cells beneath the Justice Building, dark places that reeked of mildew and dirty bodies.

I don't know why they cut my hair off. Why they chose that particular way to mark me, because it already means something to us. I have already worn it short once before in my life.

When my husband was killed, I cut it off to signal that I was in mourning. They say that the custom began when women whose loved ones had died would cut their hair in fits of grief, or that it was cut for them when their keening became violent and they started pulling out their long hair. Over time, it became practice for the women of 12. Whenever someone lost a husband or child, or a particularly close or special family member, they would cut off their hair. It was our version of a shroud, or arm band, both of which were not practical in the mines where any errant clothing or accessories could become a hazard. So now, in the dank, almost impenetrable darkness of this cell I can't shake the overwhelming feeling of sadness and sharp grief that overwhelms me when I feel my hair.

I share this cell with four other people: three men and another woman. At night I can hear the rest of them breathing, trying to sleep, sometimes crying. One man sits in the same corner day in and day out, his legs drawn up and his hands pressed against his ears. He will cry, or keep his eyes shut as tight as he can while rocking back and forth and whimpering. The woman tells me that he was arrested on the charge that he was part of a rebel group conspiring to rise up in the district. That his entire family was dragged from their beds in the middle of the night and lined up in front of their house where they were shot so he and all their neighbors could watch. When I ask her if the accusations were true she just laughs at me. Charges don't have to be true or even credible to bring someone in and detain them.

I slip my hand into my left pocket and pull out four small rocks, then cradle them in my palm while I run my numb fingers along the ground next to me, looking for another rock to add to my collection. I take my time, it's all that I have now, feeling each rock until I find a suitable one. The five in my hand grow warm in my touch and I count them over and over, then slower and slower, touching the tip of a finger to each one. Each rock is one night spent in the cell. Five nights so far. I hold on to completing this task every night before I try and sleep, of finding a new rock. It keeps my mind focused on a future point instead of letting it spin off into oblivion.

Seven nights, and I can't get warm. The woman was dragged off yesterday, kicking and screaming, and hasn't come back. I don't want to think about where she's gone so all I let myself think about is the sweater that she took with her and how it would feel to wrap my hands up in it. My eyes can't tell the difference between the night and the shadows, it's all deep black now and instead it fills the void with memories from my life. They are vivid, wakeful dreams of hands, songs, warm days, and a man with dark hair that looked like it had been kissed by fire when in sunlight. My husband, the light of my young life, crushed to death beneath tons of ore, buried with his comrades in that mine.

His face is blurry, weathered, the fine details hard to recall after so much time has passed. There are other faces that appear, but one drifts in and out more and more. Bleached out hair from the sun, grey eyes that would mock me but at times had laughter at their corners and even a kind word. Those calloused hands, that I had spent time cleaning and caring for, that drifted close to me and traced the lines on my face when I was drunk, are ghosts on my skin and I recall their paths on me. It stirs something inside me.

Sometimes I sleep, most times I just lay there on the ground, scraping my fingernails through the dirt. I don't even notice the smell anymore, or at least ignore the way my body feels covered in a layer of grime. They've pulled us all out once, made us stand in the freezing air, first with our hands held on top of our hands, then kneeling for so long that the rocks cut into our knees. One man fell over and they shot him, causing the rest of us to straighten up and find a final reserve of strength to stay in position. I had looked up at the mountains and wished for wings, wished for sun, wished to die, even.

The cold air seeps into the cells from ventilation openings at the top of the walls. They're barely noticeable from the outside but from the inside during the day they let in a tiny amount of light. Enough to focus on and hold on to. They are covered by a grate with openings about an inch square, enough to stick the tips of your fingers through but nothing else. During the day you can see shadows pass by, hear people speaking in hushed voices if they are speaking at all. Every so often I will reach up and put my fingers through the grate, imagining that I can pull it away from the window and crawl out. Become liquid and slip easily from this place and back to freedom.

Freedom, it's only a dream now. I will probably die in this cell or out in the courtyard. We can hear the gunshots of firing squads or the noise from a hanging crowd. The man in the corner has stopped crying and just stares off into the distance. I wonder if he is resigned to a fate that he doesn't deserve and whether or not he has imagined himself swinging at the end of a rope or staring down a gun. I know that I have.

Ten rocks and they start to sit full in my palm. They take eight of us out of our cells and line us up in the courtyard. I am sixth in line. Head Peackeeper Thread shoots every other person starting with the first, one shot to the head, dropping them on either side of us. I throw up on the ground in front of me. They make who is left drag the bodies to a corner where we're told they will be buried.

I can't make sense of what game they are playing with me. Why I am enduring this series of horrors.

That night I push the ten little rocks around and my hands won't stop shaking. My mind has started to wander. I can almost grasp the visions that appear in the darkness. I reach for them but they elude me. I can hear them, too. Laying on the ground my name drifts to my ears, hissed, searching. Growing more insistent and closer. Closer.

"Nellis," the low, urgent whisper at the window in the next cell over.

I sit bolt upright. That's no hallucination. That voice has called out for me in the darkness of a giant house and given me a gentle world in the calming sway of sleep syrup. My body moves agonizingly slowly as I push myself up and reach for the window grate. My fingers find purchase and the voice comes closer. I open my mouth to respond but my voice is cracked and I cough instead. Then I'm gulping and squeaking and pressing out the tips of my fingers, trying to make my presence known.

A light on my fingers, a flashlight being set down close to the grate, and then there he is. Touching me again and I can't stop crying. I beg for help and he tells me it's going to be all right.

"I'm going to get you out," Haymitch says and I touch his hand and try to pull some kind of strength from it. But my legs are giving out. My body giving way to the rush of adrenaline and emotion at his words and presence.

"Hang on," he whispers and when I slip away from the window and I hear him leave, a wall inside me crumbles and I am lost.

Twleve stones and the morning dawns clear with rare winter sun easing weakly through the grate. I'm curled in the corner, watching the light work it's way down the opposing wall when a guard comes and says it's time to go. Go where, I think to myself. It's been two nights since Haymitch came in the darkness, and now I'm wondering if I dreamed the whole thing. If it was just another desperate ploy from my aching mind to soothe me.

I'm pulled to my feet and they practically have to push me down the hallways and up the stairs, tracing the familiar path to the courtyard. My heart is slamming on the wall of my chest and I wonder if this is when I die. I don't try to stop the tears while I prepare myself to face whatever is waiting for me at the end of this walk. The door to the courtyard opens and I am pushed into the sunlight, stumbling and falling on the cobblestones. Dangerously close to the boots of my guard and I scramble to get away from them. But they don't chase me.

When I stand, I sway a little catching myself and the Peacekeepers are watching me so I turn around slowly and see him. Haymitch stands at the other end of the courtyard, his fists balled at his side and his mouth set in a hard line. There is nothing between us but I am afraid to run to him, afraid that if I move to quickly then someone will me escaping and shoot me. He finally makes a nod and starts to move in my direction and I match his steps. I keep my eyes locked on him, letting him pull me in.

We meet somewhere near the middle and when he puts his arms around me the world around me goes quiet and I press myself against the steadiness that meets me.

"It's okay, kid," he whispers, holding me while I dissolve. "Time to go home."


	11. Chapter 11

The walk home is disorienting and exhausting on more than one level. Haymitch pushes our pace until we are well on the road to the Victor's Village. I try to focus on putting one foot in front of the other, on staying next to him and not falling behind, but my mind keeps wondering if someone is following us. My eyes try and take in everything that they can and so as a result the scenery runs together and I lose my breath. Every so often we have to stop so I can catch it again. When we are finally truly alone, Haymitch stops suddenly and faces me. He doesn't speak, just moves and puts his arms around me, holding me tight against him.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, giving me a good squeaze. I can only nod in response. His arms are steady and I have to fight the urge to go slack in his embrace like I did back in the courtyard. We stay like this for a minute or so and when he lets me go I just stand there looking at him. He doesn't have anything else to say.

The first thing that Haymitch does when we arrive at his house is to take me to his attached bathroom and throw me into a hot shower, clothes and all. The garments are beyond filthy anyways and so I don't mind the hot water as it soaks through the fabric and starts to wash away the weight of the last few weeks from me. I stand directly under the showerhead for a long time just letting the warmth flow over me. Relishing the way it encapsulates me like nothing else I've ever known. I feel safe for a brief moment, protected again for a second before I remember where I am and who I'm with. Haymitch's previous warnings about his inability to protect anyone come back to me in a rush and I feel a sharp stab of anxiety to go along with it.

He was so inisistent that this was a dangerous place, that I couldn't find safety in this home and with him but the minute I left was when I was swept up. But leaving wasn't entirely my decision. When Haymitch sent me out I couldn't think of anything to do except comply. I had nothing else to give to our relationship, to our arrangement, so I hold no ill will towards him. What gnaws at me is that he pushed me away and told me to leave even after we had seen the Peacekeepers outside of my house. I understand the compulsion to protect oneself at all costs. But there is also the small voice inside me reminding me to remember how it had felt to be so close to him. To breathe in the warmth of his skin and immediacy.

When I peel off the dirty clothing I leave it in a corner of the shower, planning on never touching it again. I'm finally able to scrub my skin until it is pink and sensitive to the hot water cascading over me. I take my time in the bathroom when I'm clean, wrapping myself in fluffy towels and rubbing at my hair with one until it is partly dry. I work out the kinks with my fingers and finally am able to really see the effects that my confinement had on my body. My skin is sallow, eyes pulled at the corners like they are still waiting for a strike. My bones are a little more prominent and I feel stretched over my frame like I have shrunk. I don't like this person in the mirror, but I reach out and press my palm on the mirror over the spot where her heart would be. Comforting myself, promising myself that eventually I will be okay again.

There are fresh clothes for me laid out on Haymitch's bed and I when I slip into the clean skirt and sweater, pulling on a pair of knit legwarmers for comfort in the cold house, I feel somewhat human again.

Haymitch is waiting for me in the kitchen. There is a pair of places set at the table, one across from the other, and he's sitting at one with his hands folded in front of him. When he sees me enter he stands and starts to move about grabbing a bowl and moving to the fire where I catch sight of a pot sitting on the edge keeping warm. I smile to myself while I take a seat at the table and he places a bowl of a steaming hot grain in front of me.

"You cooked?" I ask, my first real phrase to him and he smirks.

"Don't get used to it," he replies and adds a small dish of butter to the table and I reach for it with relish.

"Thank heavens for little miracles," I mutter as I stir a generous dollop of butter into my grain, not sure if this was his intent but not caring. Haymitch and I settle into the rhythm of sharing a meal, even one as simple as this, and the more food I eat the heavier my limbs start to feel, signalling the settling of my fatigue. I end up eating another bowl, filling myself to the brim before I push the bowl back and settle myself deeper into the chair. Haymitch has been taking measured sips from a mug and watches me slowly blink at him in the warm kitchen and I wonder what is in that mug. Whether or not he's managed to get his hands on more liquor. If she's home, my guess is my grandmother has found a way to be back in business.

It hangs over our heads that now is the time for me to air grievances over what has happened. I can tell that Haymitch feels guilty, but I have no interest in piling on more torment on a person who already carries so many dead and so many tortured memories on his shoulders. But I can't let him off scott free.

"Why did you come back for me?" I say when I've let the silence stretch on long enough. He shrugs in response, then leans himself back and runs a thumb and forefinger along his eyebrows, probably trying to iron out the words before he speaks.

"I knew when you'd gone that I was wrong," he says, starting slowly but the words coming easier as he continues.

"I went to find you the next day but Ripper said you'd been taken. She didn't know where, so I went to the Justice Building but they weren't any help. Kept telling me different things every time I went there."

I'm surprised that he was so persistent, so intent on righting his mistake that he became a thorn in the authorities sides.

"How did you find me?" I ask.

"Lucky guess," he admits. "There was talk they were stepping up the executions, that Thread was starting to get desperate. No passenger trains had come in or out lately and so I finally just looked for you that night at the cells. And there you were."

Haymitch goes on to tell me that after that night he spent a frantic two days arranging my release. He spun a tale, backed up with forged documents from a certainly disreputable source, that I was officially employed as his housekeeper by the Capitol and that whatever lies anyone might have told regarding my whereabouts or activities were to be disregarded because he could vouch for me. It was such a thin plan, such a weak excuse, that I am shocked it worked. But he attributes his ultimate success to the newness of the force. We were lucky that they barely know us.

"So," I finally say when he seems to be finished. "Does that mean you're going to start paying me for cleaning your house?" Haymitch laughs. But it's what is needed at the moment. I am so drained that I cannot process much more. I desperately need sleep. Haymitch walks me upstairs again and leads me down the hallway to my room but instead of the wrecked space I'd left behind, there is instead a room that has been put back together and made ready for me.

"This doesn't make everything okay," I say quietly and almost unaware that it's come out of my mouth. Haymitch nods and I think he understands what I mean. While I can comprehend his decision to push me out, I am not ready to give him my full forgiveness.

Sleep is difficult. Whenever I close my eyes I cannot escape the memories that immediately surface. When I do finally drift off, it's nightmares that are my companions. I toss and turn for hours until I am struggling against the sheet I've been wrapped in, trying to get a clear breath again and finding my heart racing. The sun is setting when I pull myself up and pad quietly down the hallway to find solace. I knock but open Haymitch's door at the same time, unsure if he's even going to be inside. He's sitting on the bed and looks up from a book when I enter. His eyebrows lift up in question.

"I can't sleep," I say and he automatically shifts over, making room for me. I slide in and find his free hand closest to me, curling my fingers into his palm so that they're protected by his. It's simple, but just being near another person soothes my mind and fears. The tension seeps out of my part of me and I feel like I am sinking into the bed, like I am falling away from the world yet remain anchored by my hand curled in Haymitch's.

Finally, I am able to rest.


	12. Chapter 12

Days melt into weeks, running together into a stream of colors and moments that flow around me and through us. I learn to manage the moments of fear that grip me every so often by throwing myself into the myriad of tasks that present themselves in the running of this house. I let myself float through the routines of the day, pivoting and bending around the flotsam and jetsom that has collected around various pieces of furniture and every free space. Instead of just sticking to the kitchen, I attack the rest of the house and work myself to exhaustion every day. It doesn't take long for the place to bounce back, to feel like a home again.

While my waking habits have mostly kept the terrors at bay, the nighttime still holds sway over me. So to keep myself from falling into a trend of insomnia I continue to sleep in Haymitch's bed with him only an arm's reach away should I wake up in the throes of a nightmare. It happens more often than I would like to admit, but once I reach out and touch his arm, or place a hand on his back, I can ground myself and even out my heartbeat and breathing.

Keeping a routine forces Haymitch to adopt one as well, though his patterns are the opposite of mine. He sleeps during the day, preferring to stay up all night and drink while I sleep. My grandmother has clearly gotten her business going again, and I think that Haymitch pays her special visits to let her know how I am. I am not thrilled that he's drinking again, but I keep the criticism to myself. Beligerent Haymitch hasn't made any appearances lately and I think it is because he is honestly making an effort to keep things steady between us.

It doesn't go unnoticed, the way he will make it a point to say 'thank you' when I place a serving of dinner in front of him. Or how I will automatically find his hand when I lay down to sleep and trace the lines on his palm, try to smooth the marks on his skin while I drift off. Or the moment when I was washing breakfast dishes and he leaned in close to me to place a cup in the sink, letting his free hand rest on my shoulder for a moment, his thumb on my neck and lingering for a second longer than was probably appropriate. The way his touch had left a warm spot on my skin.

One morning I catch him watching me tie up my hair for the day. Because of it's uneven length, braiding is difficult, so I twist sections of it back before adding them into a woven braid that wraps around my head. Small pieces end up slipping out, framing my face and I do my best to pin everything back. I perch on the counter in the bathroom, close to the mirror with my arms raised to piece the hair back, and I see Haymitch through the crook of my elbow and he smiles when I blush.

"My mother used to do that," he says. "After my father died."

"Oh?" I say as casually as I can but it's the first time he's ever spoken to me about his family. He nods and I don't push the subject anymore. I'm almost certain that the answer to my poised question on the whereabouts of his family will be the same as mine.

Gone.

When the air begins to warm I throw open every window in reach and fresh air floods the house. The yard gets an even dose of my attentions and I pull weeds and make sense of the overgrown flower beds once again. Wildflowers bloom in the open spaces behind the houses and I gather bouquets of them to put in glasses along the window sills. A bunch, smaller and more disjointed than the ones I collected, appears on my bedside table, greeting me in the spring sunshine when I open my eyes one day.

We go on like this, living each of our days in our own microcosm within the utter desolation of our district. But all good things, even if they be born in the midst of despair, will eventually come to an end.

We are sitting in the living room after dinner, Haymitch nursing a fresh bottle on the sofa and me with my drawn up knees in an armchair with a cup of tea, and we are waiting for the start of Mandatory Programming for the evening. Haymitch has gotten quieter and quieter as the evening has worn on, drawing into himself and leaving me for whatever place in his head he goes when he is in such a mood.

The Capitol seal comes on the television and I grip my mug, the anthem playing and Haymitch wrings the neck of the bottle like he could strangle it. Then the President, and we are both silent but our features set in hard lines. He's talking about the Quells, the celebrations of meaningless games in the past. I glance at Haymitch, the memories of his Games must be coming on strong and he takes a long pull off the bottle. The cards are brought out, and in carefully measured words but barely hiding his delight, Snow reads the sentence that sends Haymitch off the deep end. The Victor's will be reaped again. Sent in again. Will face the reality that their lives have been lived on the fallacy of borrowed time.

I can barely believe what I've heard. My fingers drift over my mouth, trying to hide the slight tremble in my lips and the way my breath won't seem to come anymore.

Haymitch cries out and throws the bottle at the television, missing horribly and it ends up smashing against the wall.

The boy comes first. His blonde hair disheveled and blue eyes on fire with anger and hard determination written on his face. His fists are balled and I can see him shaking slightly but his words are steady and sure. He has one request of Haymitch and I leave them arguing in the living room while Haymitch breaks the seal of a new bottle.

I go to the kitchen where I sit at the table and press the palms of my hands against the wood, trying to melt through it, trying to steady the world again, trying to infuse myself with something sure and unflinching? Maybe all of it. But eventually I lean forward and press my forehead to the table and let the tears come, wrestling with the twisting grief already rising inside me. Already mourning a man who isn't even mine and isn't even gone yet.

When the girl comes, much later and in a much different state than the boy, I use the backstairs to go up to bed, needing a part of Haymitch right now but knowing that whatever they need to say to each other I will never be able to fully understand. I wrap myself in the blankets on the bed and stare at the window, watch the moonlight shift across the walls, and eventually I go to sleep.

* * *

><p>Everything has been different.<p>

Since the announcement of the Quell, the three have been preparing. Gone are the tender gestures from before and in their place again are the cutting remarks, scowls, and accusations that with each meal or treatment I force into Haymitch, that I am trying to kill him.

"Well, at least I'm not the only one," I finally say to him in total exasperation, hands placed firmly on my hips, after I've been trying to work a knot out of his shoulder. My hands smell like pine salve, prescribed by Mrs. Everdeen to ease their sore muscles while they build themselves up for the Quell. Haymitch looks at me, incredulity giving way to the scowl, and finally settling into a wry smile. It's the first one I've seen in weeks and I go back to working the muscle and telling him to just buck up and bear it.

Late at night Haymitch takes to making phone calls. I have rarely seen him use the phone, just the odd time here and there to speak to Effie Trinket, whose perpetually cheerful voice gives me a headache and chills just hearing it however weakly from the phone. I ask Haymitch how he can stand talking to her, let alone the time that they have to spend together during the Games and he just tells me to lay off. That she means well. Most of the time his calls are about the weather. Or questions about how trees are growing. Or the tides. I can't quite make sense of how all these different trains of thought are related. Or why he's keeping it a secret from me.

The night before the Reaping is hot and I don't have the energy for preparing much of a dinner. We drag the front porch rocking chairs out behind the house where we pick off a spread of cold chicken, apples, and cheese. There is bread to go along with it and we tear off big chunks straight from the loaf. Haymitch nurses a bottle, he's been keeping himself sober for the sake of getting ready for the Quell but tonight is special so we bend the rules. Every so often I will steal it from his hand and take a drink. It's that kind of a night. I don't plan on getting drunk again, just enough to loosen the hard knot inside of me at what is coming tomorrow.

I'm afraid for Haymitch, afraid for myself. He's said before that he thinks that these Games are going to be different and I have to admit that it feels like all bets are off. The rules don't apply anymore. So for the moment I want to enjoy what little time we have left to spend in this world before it completely changes. The sun sets, the crickets come out to sing and in the distance where a creek widens into a pond there are frogs that add their voices to the melody. I've never had cause in my adult life to gaze up at the stairs and consider them as anything other than distant balls of light. They give us fixed points of reference when we're lost, allow us to navigate the darkness and return home.

"Can you see the stars in the Capitol?" I say suddenly and Haymitch tips his head back against the chair and considers his answer for a minute. His voice is thick but not drawling.

"Somewhat," he answers slowly. His brows knit together and then he continues. "So many lights there it's hard to know what's real or not shining in that sky. But some stars burn through no matter what."

"That's a comforting thought," I answer, running the tips of my fingers along the armrests of the rocking chair and pushing myself back and forth with my toes. I like the way the wood the chair feels on my fingers that have come to know every inch of this house over the last months, and in some ways have come to know the owner of the house as well. They have laundered his clothes, soothed his aching muscles, warded off nightmares when he slept through alcohol withdrawals, and have cared for him in low moments. They never wavered from their work but I know they will be listless in twenty-four hours, longing for touch again.

Haymitch watches me and I glance over, expecting to see his eyes clouded but they are surprisingly clear. He's frowning. I worry I've said something wrong but the look that registers in my brain is sadness and not disapproval.

"Tell me something that no one else knows," I say quietly and my words are almost lost in the night symphony. Haymitch looks out into the darkness around us and sighs, his exhale taking every bit of air from his body. I wait patiently, continuing to caress the chair. Haymitch finally smiles, letting the expression creep over every part of him.

"My father taught us flatfooting," he says.

"No," I say and I can't contain the laughter. Flatfooting is an old thing, dancing done on a small wooden platform in a yard or a living room on a cold night. Tapping out patterns to accompany fiddles or songs. The moves and flow of rhythm and instinct take time to learn and even longer to master. I try to imagine Haymitch as a younger man amongst family and friends learning the steps from an older man who maybe looked like him. Or shadows of him. The idea of it all makes me just grin at him like an idiot.

Haymitch can't stand me and nudges my arm to get me to stop laughing at him.

"Your turn," he says.

"I was pregnant once," I say not realizing the words have spilled out of me, set free by the liquor in my veins and the drop of my guard. My laughter has faded into the night and the stars quietly bear witness to my confession. But then there's Haymitch, whose attention is on nothing but me at the moment and I have to go on.

"I couldn't bring a child into this world," I say. "I just couldn't do that. He was angry. He yelled, I cried, but in the end I couldn't do it."

"What did you do?" Haymitch asks, all levity gone from his tone.

"Took care of it," I answer, quiet and low. "And then a few years later he died." I shrug and hold my hands out palms up like something of the life I had lost will suddenly materialize in them.

"Life," I say, and Haymitch nods. We both have our scars, his more public than mine, but together there can be new beginnings from the ashes. We sit quietly for awhile, long enough that when I feel myself start to fall asleep in the chair I know that my bed time has long ago come and gone.

I rise and put my hand on Haymitch's shoulder, hanging on to him a little while I gain my balance again. He covers my hand with his own, giving me a gentle pull to bring me around the chair so that I am standing in front of him. His fingers are interlaced with mine now, his thumb alternately pressing and drawing a small circle on my palm. He looks up at me, his eyes searching my face and I smile but I can feel the sad memories at the corners of my mouth.

Haymitch sighs and leans in to me, his face coming in to my middle and then taking a deep breath of my cotton shirt, of the lavender soap I use in the morning, of the night air in the fabric. His hands drift up and then rest on my hips, tracing a pattern with his fingers and eventually they are beneath the hem of the garment, burning on my skin. My eyelids drift shut and I push my fingers into his hair, holding him. He holds me there, his arms around me and his head on my stomach. I brush his temple with my thumb and I can feel him smile.

"I'm glad you came here, kid," he whispers.

"Me too," I answer. Proximity does weird things, can change the foundations of our little world or the truths of our lives just by simply existing in the same space as another person for awhile.

So I mean what I say, that I am glad to be exactly where I am.


	13. Chapter 13

_Hello, friends! I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for all of the reads, follows, favs, and for the kind words and feedback that you've left in the reviews. It's a great feeling to know that this story is enjoyed as I've enjoyed writing it. Thanks for sticking around and sending me the good vibes! -Minke_

* * *

><p>Deep in the night, long past the time when I usually have been sleeping, Haymitch and I lie awake in the moonlight, wrapped in the hot air that sticks close to our skin. His fingers trace lines on the insides of my arms, my sides, up my neck into my hair, drawing cruves and bends that describe the paths of rivers flowing beneath my burning skin. Everywhere his hands are feels like it's smouldering, whether from the lingering heat of the day or my own internal fire, I've lost track. I don't care. Whatever this is will be gone tomorrow and I will be thrown into the fray once more. So for now, I give myself over to the rush of the moment and the throb of my own heart inside my chest.<p>

I rest in the hollow underneath his chin, my head tilted slightly and my lips resting on the spot where his collarbones come together. He fills my head, arms around me, and mine around him, legs entwined. Every so often he moves and places his lips on the space between my eyebrows. On the corners of my eyes. My mouth. I trace the lines of his face trying to memorize and store away every dip and crease he's collected over the years. We rise and fall together, draw in and exhale, contributing to the turn of the night and the shadows that creep over us and hide our fears from one another just for a little longer. Come morning we will have to take them out and lay them bare in the light but for now, for now, we will savor these stolen hours that seem to belong only to us.

I wake in late morning with birdsong in my head and an arm draped across my middle. The air in the room is warm, close, and I can tell that even if I open a window it will be the same outside. It's going to be one of those kind of days. Humid days come and go here with the winds and when they are slack the air will sit heavy and oppressive, pressing down on everything and slowing everyone to a crawl. Like walking through water on dry land.

For a while I lay curled in the shelter created by Haymitch's arms, listening to his even breathing and the movement of him against my back. I want him to sleep as long as he can, to avoid having to move forward with the day, but we can only wait so long. When I move out he stretches and grimaces even with his eyes closed, then rolls over to face the windows and drift back into sleep. He looks peaceful for the moment, caught somewhere between where the nightmares find him and that place we all find just as we fall asleep. I like him like this. I like myself like this.

I shake my head to get that thought right out of there. There is no sense in it. Nothing to be gained by it.

I shower, dry my hair, and pull it only half up, twisting pieces back until they come together at the middle of my skull and I can tie them off. I put on a light cotton shift, cream in color, and settle myself in the kitchen to wait. I don't have an appetite but I make myself pick at some fruit and a slice of bread, just enough to put something in my stomach and hopefully ward off the ache that will undoubtedly come. I make some tea and stand at the window for a long time letting it cool down before I take a drink.

Haymitch surfaces a few minutes after noon, when I have been standing in the same spot for so long that I've lost track of time and my tea has long since cooled to an almost unpalatable temperature. When I hear his footsteps my throat contracts, a sharp pain in my abdomen, and the sting of impending tears in my eyes. I take a deep breath in when he enters the kitchen, not bothering to avoid the creaky floorboard, and slips an arm around me, resting it on my chest and pulling me to rest back against his. I keep my arms crossed over my middle, trying to ease the storm inside me, and I feel his heartbeat against my back. His mouth close to my ear. I close my eyes for a brief moment before he speaks.

"I'm sorry," he says. I reach up and hold on to his arm like I will float away if I don't hang on to something.

"What's going to happen?" I ask. He shrugs against me.

"Will you come back?" It's the one thing I have been wanting to ask him for weeks now, whether or not he will make the return trip from the Capitol. He lets out a long sigh and rests his chin on my shoulder. There must be words poised on the tip of his tongue, but he hesitates. I can feel it in his hands on me, the way they shift a little when I ask him these questions.

"I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'll try," he finally says and I think this is the closest thing to the truth that he can tell me. What he thinks will soothe me. I turn around and his arm drifts down to my waist and I'm confronted by those grey eyes, the eyes I'd let in during that night last winter and had wanted so badly to shut out in months after when they were filled with anger towards me. But now they are soft at the edges and sad in the middles, eyes filled with goodbyes that we both want to leave unsaid.

"Haymitch," I say. "I don't know what this is. I don't know where this is going but-"

He cuts me off and his hands on the small of my back are insistent.

"Just listen," he urges, his voice low and tense. "My family, my girl, they all died because of me. Two weeks after I came home they were all gone and it's been just me ever since. I can't hold you to anything and if you want to leave you can, but you have to know what's at stake if you choose to stay. You just have to promise me that no matter what happens, no matter what you see, that you'll keep yourself safe. That you'll stay alive."

I must look confused, bewildered even, at the revelation about his loved ones. I want to press him further but now is not the time, and I wonder if we will ever have a time for that. I can already feel the distance creeping in between us and separating us, a great chasm that can never be crossed again. Even now when he's so close he still seems out of reach, at arms length. Still, I reach up and pull his head down to touch our forheads together. We stay like that for a few heartbeats before I press the three middle fingers of my left hand to my lips, then place them over his heart. It is all the goodbye that I can manage for this time we have spent together.

When he kisses me, I wish time would stand still, allow this moment to be free in the affectionate gesture.

He's to report to the Justice Building at 1:30, and we wander into what seems like an abandoned town. But I can feel people's eyes on us from their shuttered windows. Afraid of the roads empty of citizens but packed with Peacekeepers. Haymitch walks with his eyes forward but I move as close to him as I can without tripping over us because just the sight of the Peacekeepers gives me chills. They keep out of the Victor's Village and I have been sheltered these past few months, so now when confronted by their hygienic uniforms and tinted helmets I almost can't control the trembling in my hands.

I hide myself in the thick of the crowd that assembles for the Reaping and I start to feel like I am alone in a sea of misery, floating on the tiniest raft of false hope that something will remain when the Games are over. When Effie Trinket pulls Haymitch's name from the ball I feel like I've been hit square in the chest, but then a second later the boy volunteer's and my heart sinks. They are his family and watching one, or even both, of them die is going to break him. The three Victor's are pulled from the stage, the doors of the Justice Building are locked, and I am left in the midst of all these people with my world crashing down around me.

* * *

><p>I fall asleep in the living room, wrapped in a sweater over my cream dress the only thing I need to keep me warm. I wait for them to come, to collect me again, but the house stays quiet for days after Haymitch leaves. At times it feels massive, at others oppressive. But mostly it feels empty and cold despite the summer weather. After a few days I bring myself to take care of the place, to go through the motions of cleaning and keeping up an appearance. It served me well before to give my mind a place to focus on and it does the trick now.<p>

I take the wildflowers bouquets I had placed all over the house and string them up on butcher's twine in the kitchen, creating a garland of flowers that criss-crosses the kitchen and concentrates their scent. I stay away from the bedroom upstairs as much as I can, entering only to find clean clothes and pick out one of his shirts to wear over a skirt. I sleep on the couch, or in the rocking chair next to the fire in the kitchen, or wherever I collapse that evening.

When the Games begin, the television turns on of it's own accord and the sound draws me into the living room. They cut between shots of the blood bath, of the mentors, of Capitol citizens watching in the squares. It stays on for three days and the sound permeates my conciousness no matter how hard I try to hide from it. That third night, what ends up being the last night, is when I finally go back into the bedroom and wrap myself in the blankets, trying to bring back the memories to replace the noise from the television.

I'm caught off guard when the sound cuts off. The house is deathly silent. The lights are all gone. Even from here I can see darkness stretching where there should be lights in town. I drift downstairs and out to the porch, the air alive with a silent tension and I see the Everdeen's outside as well. The woman and her other daughter, standing still, listening, just like me. The hair stands up on my arms, a rush of cold up my spine.

Bombs.

Fire.

Hovercraft appearing and dropping insanity and destruction on us all.

We run. Push. Everyone is screaming. The Seam is one big fireball and there are people on fire running but they drop. Panic. Palpable and throbbing through the crowd of people fleeing and screaming and pushing and falling. I breathe in thick smoke, it burns my lungs, and I drop to my hands and knees hacking and spitting. Throwing up.

Kids crying, crying, rolling. Melting. I run, the fire at my back but my lungs protest and give out every few feet to leave me in fits of coughing but I crawl forward. Soft dirt under my fingers and grass, the meadow, and my stinging eyes look up to the see the stars one more time before they are swallowed whole by the rolling black clouds that engulf District 12.


	14. Chapter 14

They say we should be happy. They say we should be grateful.

I feel neither of these things. What I feel is a toxic mixture of anger, hatred, sadness, and loss. They churn inside me, swirl up into my limbs and back to my middle where they compress until it threatens to explode and blast me into tiny bits.

That is, I feel this when I am capable of feeling anything at all. Most of the time I am numb. I think we are all pushing through these days battling varying degrees of numbness and we are just getting by the best we can. There's so few of us now, so few of us made it, that we tend to group together mostly unknowingly. We find each other in the corridors and in the dining hall, seeking the familiar in this place that is so foreign and so strange. The newness of this life is enough to drive your brain to shut down for a little while, to let you go numb just to keep from completely losing it.

It's a struggle to reconcile the existence of District 13, much less the intricacy of it's structure that was carved out in it's efforts to survive. We were welcomed in, welcomed being a very generous term for what in reality was the systematic cataloguing of us as refugees and newcomers. After three days in the woods, listening to people dying, crying, all manners of passing out of this life, we were picked up and whisked away to 13 where they broke us into smaller groups and shoved us through medical checks and showers.

I managed to escape the fires with little outward damage to my person, just an overall singe to my hair and skin that everyone seems to carry. The real harm was caused when I inhaled great lungfuls of the smoke. The doctor described it as almost a searing of the inside of my lungs, though he said that wasn't quite exact, but the image sticks with me. Twice a day I have to take medicine through an inhaler, it's helped the last few days but I still get out of breath quickly.

The medical staff were nice enough, but they lacked a warmth behind their words that would have transcended them from nice to gentle. They're strange here. Their speech has corners, an inherent harshness to it that sounds clipped and cutting when they speak. No matter what they are saying. I barely talk to anyone unless they are from 12, I dislike the 13 way of speaking so much that I just prefer to stay in silence. I long for the roundness and ease that my people have when they talk to each other. It's like listening to creeks babble and rivers spill over precipices the way we converse. There are twists and turns and nuances of phrases and tones that we use to convey things to one another. I realize now it's akin to a musical lyric when someone gets a good story going, when they are carried off by the words flowing through them.

I ache for home. Sometimes I am caught short by it and have to calm myself before I am able to move on with the day. There's been no talk, not even the whisp of a rumor, that we might be able to return to 12 one day. All that stretches before us is an uncertain future in a place where we don't belong. Our fates are now tied to those of the entirety of District 13. If they should fail in whatever endeavors they have set themselves upon, then we will fail with them. I can hardly dream of success.

When we arrived we were assigned to compartments, families were given priority to stay together until all that was left over were the orphans and those of us with no other family to speak of. I was assigned to watch over two kids from town, the Cartwright kids, with parents who never emerged from the woods during our days of waiting. I saw them watching the trees, hopeful eyes on the first day, slowly fading the second, and finally dying on the third when they realized that as the smoke began to dwindle from where the town burned, so did the possibility that their parents were alive.

The three of us live together now, take care of each other in a way. One thing I am sure that I feel is grateful for their presence in this sterile place of metal where the walls hum and the lights mimic sunrise and sunset but are poor imitations at best.

"The kids in school, they make fun of the way I talk," says the boy, Aran, nine years old, blonde hair and blue eyes, who sits across from me at our table. He's pushing the last of the mashed vegetable around the tray, his chin resting on one hand and leaning into the supporting arm. His sister, Delly, blonde again and seventeen, sits next to him and tries to give him words of encouragement about making friends and giving people a chance. They're town kids, no, town orphans now, and we have been grouped together. The three of us are loners who need each other in this strange place.

"It will get better," Delly says, her cadence already starting to straighten out in her attempts to assimilate herself into 13. "You just need to give them a chance."

I catch Aran's eye and wink at him, he smiles. Later on in our compartment the three of us will tell stories and try to remember our district that was annihilated. When they fall asleep I will stay awake, unable to face the dreams that wait and allow myself to descend into the overwhelming sadness of missing the home I had created. It's so strong, the attachment I feel for that huge house that had blossomed under my ministrations to become a home that I now fear I will never see again.

But more than the house, I miss Haymitch. In spite of his often caustic personality, we had worked our way inside of each other's lives and forged a tenuous friendship at the very least. I miss his presence, however remotely it had been some days, and how we had orbited around each other until finally crashing together. That's what it was really, a slow build up of something that eventually blew up in our faces. I wonder where he is now. Where he ended up after the girl, his girl, Katniss, blew up that arena.

It's been two weeks since we were rescued, and just over three since Haymitch left for the Capitol. When I stay up at night, I tear a tiny piece of a single sheet of paper that I found in a drawer and roll it up into a tight ball. I keep the collection of pieces on the small alcove shelf next to my bunk, lining each one up in perfect groups every night. Moving them around but always putting them back in a straight, even line, measuring our time here.

I'm sitting up in my bunk leaning against the wall and listening to the hum inside the pipes and screens when there's a sharp knock on the door. It's late, the digital clock display on the wall reads 0124, long past the evening curfew. Aran, curled up next to his sister and facing me, wakes enough to glance at the door and then lock on me. He looks worried, and I press a finger to my lips, asking for silence and make a motion that I will see to the visitor. After placing my bare feet on the cool floor, I stoop and pick up the black sweater they gave me on arrival, putting it on over the nightgown, also gifted from the generosity of 13. Another sharp little knock and I click the lock back before inching open the sliding door.

"Hey, kid," those grey eyes that have haunted my waking moments smile at me from the face I have longed to see again.

It's that moment after jumping, when you're free of the ground but haven't been caught again by gravity. I let the door slide open slowly and there Haymitch is, two guards for an escort standing against the far wall of the corridor but keeping a close eye on us. I take in all of him, in 13 grey and a black stocking cap. His cheek bears the ghost of a long scratch and for a second I think wryly that at least someone got a swipe in at him. He has a lot to answer for. But right now I forget that I should be angry with him, should be demanding explanations or answers from him.

"Hi," I manage to whisper. And when the corners of his mouth turn up just slightly at my greeting I move and he meets me. We twist, bend, press together trying to erase the time and miles that have separated us. His hands hold me, arms strong and encircling, creating the home that I had been longing for. That I had always been searching for. In this world of afters and uncertainties, I can only be sure of the moment when I am with the people I care about. It's this moment that I give in to that truth of life that home and belonging is wherever we create it. And whoever we decide to create it with.

So not caring that we are being watched, I hang on to Haymitch like my entire world depends on it. But that's only because it does.

"Where have you been?" I ask, holding his face in my hands.

"Drying out," he says, his voice gruff, and I recognize that hollow in his eyes when he's fighting against the withdrawal.

"They don't want me out and about getting into trouble until they think I'm cured," he continues. The idea that they would be able to cure him of what ails him is both ridiculous and arrogant at the same time. Of course they would think that it is just a simple sickness to be waited out, or treated with medication. It can only be managed, lived through, survived. Something Haymitch and I were learning how to do.

"It took awhile to convince them to let me see you," he nods towards the two guards. "Which is why I had to bring friends."

"Who gave you this?" I ask and trace the healing cut with the tip of my finger.

"A little bird," he says with a smirk.

He leans in to kiss me, a gentle thing more of a hello at a respectable distance than anything. But I linger, insisting that we don't need the formalities. He runs his hands through my hair, noting it has regained some of it's lost length and we are caught up in the storm of want and need. Like we can only get oxygen from one another.

It's like a dream, but eventually they tell him he has to go. I let him go, sliding from beneath my hands, my fingertips running down his arms until they are on his palms and then matching the tips of his fingers. Then we're apart and he's telling me he'll see me again soon, heading down the hallway flanked by the guards and he glances one last time before he disappears around a corner and I shut the door. I remind myself to inhale, exhale, repeat.

"We okay?" Aran says, unsure, waiting. I turn towards him.

"Yes," I say and I don't have to lie. "We're okay."


End file.
